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THE 



EAST AND THE WEST 

OUR DEALINGS WITH OUR 
NEIGHBOURS. 



dsssmrs iru tnStnvd Jfatiira. 



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EDITED BY THE 



HON. HENRY STANLEY. 



February, 1865. 




LONDON: 

HATCHARD AND CO. 187 PICCADILLY 

UJoohsclLers la l-ll-li. % firraass of Males. 



[TVie ri#7i£ of Translation reserved.'} 



.SI 



/ 



LONDON: 

Strangewayr and Walden, Printers, 
28 Castle St. Leicester Sq. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The perversion of ideas through the use of 
vague and false terms, such as policy, expe- 
diency, civilisation, military operations, &c, is 
the chief cause of the inability to distinguish 
between right and wrong which leads to the 
rapidly increasing number of little wars in 
which the country is involved. These are 
becoming so frequent, and are so lightly 
entered upon, that disasters have occurred 
before the country even knew that its troops 
were engaged. We have forced our presence 
upon the Japanese, and have compelled them 
to admit our consular jurisdiction, though its 
inefficacy to maintain order had been proved 
by experience : though Sir Rutherford Alcock 
has exposed its defects in the first chapter of 
his second volume on Japan, which is pro- 
bably only a transcript of his official corre- 
spondence, no steps appear to be in contem- 
plation for their remedy. 

In 1829 M. Abel Remusat inveighed 
against the practice of Europeans in adopting 
a different standard of right and wrong out 
of Europe, following only their own will and 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

pleasure; but since he wrote the following 
passage the evil he complained of has im- 
measurablv increased : — "A singular race is 
this European race. The opinions with 
which it is armed, the reasonings upon which 
it rests, could astonish an impartial judge, 
if such an one could be at present found on 
earth. They walk the globe, showing them- 
selves to the humiliated nations as the type 
of beauty in their figures, as the basis of 
reason in their ideas, the perfection of under- 
standing in their imaginations. That is their 
only measure. They judge all things by that 
rule. In their own quarrels they are agreed 
upon certain principles by which to assassi- 
nate one another with method and regularity. 
But right of nations is superfluous in dealing 
with Orientals." 

The necessity of again calling attention 
to these ills, is the excuse or the justification 
for the publication of this series of Essays. 
The fifth of the series does not refer to the 
above-mentioned subjects; but since the 
recent startling announcement that Convo- 
cation has already taken steps to effect 
intercommunion between the Church of 
England and the Russian Church, its publi- 
cation is not less opportune. 



CONTENTS. 



ESSAY PACK 

I. OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM FOREIGN JURISDICTION IN 

COUNTRIES HAVING REGULAR GOVERNMENTS . 1 

II. MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT . . 55 

III. THE EFFECTS OF CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL 

LAW . . . . . . .111 

IV. ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM .... 139 

V. THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES . . 209 

VI. ON THE PROTECTION AFFORDED TO BRITISH SUB- 
JECTS AND THEIR INTERESTS ABROAD . - 265 



OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM FOREIGN JURISDICTION IN 

COUNTRIES HAVING REGULAR GOVERNMENTS. 

Foreign jurisdiction, or " extra- territoriality " as it 
is now sometimes called, is the right ceded by one 
State to another State of judging by its own officers 
causes arising amongst its subjects residing in the 
territories of the State which thus ceded part of its 
sovereign rights. This subject may be examined 
under three aspects ; viz. its justice, its expediency, 
and its practicability. 

Foreign jurisdiction is not an abstract right 
which can be claimed, or which is founded upon 
any other grounds than the good pleasure of the 
State which makes this concession or delegation of 
its rights. Neither has this system any antiquity 
in its favour. The Civis Romanus, whose memory 
has been invoked in support of the widest demands 



i 



% OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

that could be made in behalf of British residents 
in foreign states, enjoyed no such privileges or 
immunities. His privileges were enjoyed only 
within the limits of the Roman Empire, and his 
position was like that held by the Englishman in 
India; though, in all probability, it did not quite 
amount to that, since Englishmen in India claim to 
be free from the jurisdiction of native magistrates, 
although appointed under British authority. 

The custom of foreign jurisdiction arose from 
the grant of this privilege made by the Ottoman 
Sultans. 

These grants, or delegations of the right of 
jurisdiction, were made by the Ottoman Govern- 
ment of its free will and pleasure, at a period of 
the plenitude of its power, when its greatest neigh- 
bour, the German Empire, was its tributary, and 
before the existence of that of Russia. This dele- 
gation of authority was in accordance with the 
principles of the Ottoman Government, which had 
already delegated civil jurisdiction amongst its 
Christian subjects to the Bishops at the head of 
the respective Churches. It is often erroneously 
imagined that these privileges were obtained, nay, 
even forced from the Ottoman Government, under 
treaty stipulations, on account of the name by which 
these privileges are known ; namely, the " capitu- 



THE TURKISH CAPITULATIONS. 6 

lations." This word, however, has no connexion 
with the yerb "to capitulate;" but is derived 
from the Italian " capitulazione" having the mean- 
ing of headings or sections. At the time that 
the Ottoman Porte confided to the Christian em- 
bassies the power of administering the law to their 
subjects, this concession was not fraught with injury 
to the Porte. At that time the number of Euro- 
pean subjects who came to Turkey was very small ; 
those who came were much more under the authority 
of their Ambassadors and Consuls than can be the 
case at the present time : the capitulations con- 
tained, and still contain, provisions which have been 
since eluded, which prevented injury accruing to 
the State from the privileges which it granted. 
The Christian Kings, also, were more careful that 
these privileges should not be abused. The cele- 
brated traveller Tavernier mentions that he had de- 
posited a sum of money, as a security for his good 
behaviour, in the hands of the King's Intendant at 
Marseilles, before leaving France for Turkey. When 
the number of foreigners was very small, and was 
limited to men of worth and respectability, the injury 
caused by their immunity from subjection to the 
law of the land was also limited, but the introduc- 
tion of steam communication and the increase of 
travelling has entirely altered the circumstances 



4 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

The treaties, moreover, up to the present time, only 
sanctioned the establishment in Turkey of wholesale 
merchants, and did not allow of retail dealers ; for 
it is known that a clause in a late treaty concluded 
between Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire, 
containing words sanctioning retail dealers, does not 
exist in the original, but was inserted in the trans- 
lation by an interpreter. Such a practice would bear 
an ugly name if it came under the cognisance of 
an English court of law. The consequences have 
been two-fold; the foreign shopkeepers pay no 
taxes to the State in which they live, and are thus 
in a more favoured condition than the shopkeepers 
subjects of the country ; they are also in the con- 
dition of privileged creditors and privileged debtors : 
secondly, the following of certain trades by foreigners, 
under the present system of foreign jurisdiction, ren- 
ders the administration of justice impossible : all 
the wine- shops and coffee-houses kept by Ionians, 
Maltese, Greeks, and others, are closed to the police. 
These wine- shops are the rendezvous of robbers, 
murderers, and other criminals, who are more secure 
there than criminals were formerly in the sanc- 
tuaries of Alsatia and the Savoy. These abuses 
have been swept away throughout Christendom; 
why should Christian Governments wish to main- 
tain them in Turkey in behalf of criminals who 



EUROPEAN CRIMINAL POPULATION OF PERA. 

are not even their own subjects ? for a very large 
proportion of the scum of Pera and Galata are only 
protected subjects; that is, persons abusively enjoy- 
ing the immunities of the capitulations. It must 
be observed here, that when the Porte granted these 
privileges they were not intended to be applied to 
her own subjects ; but a very large proportion of 
the subjects of the European Consuls, in all the 
countries in which the principle of foreign juris- 
diction has obtained, are denationalised subjects of 
the State which has been deluded into making this 
fatal concession. The consequences to Turkey of the 
existence of the European community of Pera and 
Galata are a large accession of criminal popula- 
tion, a source of demoralisation, deprivation of the 
power of pursuing the criminals to their haunts, 
and absence of contribution by this community of 
their share of the taxes for defraying police expenses 
caused by themselves. 

The Europeans in Turkey not being amenable 
to the local tribunals construe this immunity into 
impunity, and claim to do that which none of the 
inhabitants may do, and also that which is disallowed 
in all countries. It is but since the last treaty with 
Great Britain that the Porte has succeeded in ex- 
cluding gunpowder from amongst those articles 
which may be freely traded in. Yet in all countries 



D OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

the trade in gunpowder must be subject to govern- 
ment restrictions, whether with reference to the 
possibility of insurrections or to the danger from 
fire to life and limb. "Wine and spirits in a strictly 
Mussulman country, such as Arabia, or in countries 
such as Siam and Japan, are in the same category, 
and cannot become lawful objects of importation for 
the use of the inhabitants. Yet, when compensa- 
tion was exacted for the sufferers by the Jiddah 
massacre, one of the claims brought against the 
Porte was put in by a Greek, not a British subject, 
for fifty thousand dollars for a wine- and- spirit shop. 
This shop probably only contained in reality a few 
bottles of raki and a couple of barrels of wine, of a 
far less value ; but had it contained the quantity 
alleged, how can such importation be justified, 
whilst yearly attempts are made in Parliament by 
the supporters of the Permissive Bill to check the 
extension of the sale of spirits and the national 
vice of drunkenness ? It must not be forgotten 
either, that the calamity at Jiddah was entirely 
brought on by the drunkenness of the locum tenens 
of the British Consul, and by his violence in en- 
forcing his own decision of a matter which he should 
have referred to the Embassy at Constantinople. 

The privileges conferred by what are called the 
capitulations, and by the successive treaties made 



FOREIGNERS IN TURKEY. 7 

in imitation of them with other States of Asia, were 
only intended to secure immunity from the sum- 
mary action of local tribunals: these privileges, 
though placing foreigners in an exceptional position, 
were clearly not intended to place them in a posi- 
tion superior to that of the inhabitants of the 
country. The ancient Ottoman privileges did not, 
for instance, grant immunity from taxation to a large 
foreign co mmu nity, since they not only did not 
contemplate, but they provided against the perma- 
nent settlement of foreigners, such as those who 
form the inhabitants of Pera and Galata. These 
people are designated by the Turks as Vatan&iz, or 
people without a country, and they entirely fulfil 
the conditions implied by Yattel's definition of 
vagabonds ; viz. people born of parents who have 
lost their domicile in one country without becoming 
naturalised in another. They may also be described 
as without a language, for they speak neither 
French, Italian, Greek, nor Turkish correctly, and 
their conversation is usually a mixture of those 
languages, amusing specimens of which jargon have 
been given by M. Theophile Gautier. But those 
treaties which have reference simply to the action 
of law-courts and police, have been wrested into 
the right of disregarding the laws, regulations, and 
social observances of the countries where those 



8 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

treaties exist. For instance, regulations exist in 
many European countries which may appear ridi- 
culous to the inhabitants of others, but which they 
would not be borne out in disregarding : such as the 
prohibition of smoking near the sentries posted at 
some of the German Palaces ; of keeping the head 
covered when the Host is passing ; of whistling or 
playing on a musical instrument on the Sabbath in 
Scotland ; of driving down Constitution Hill without 
the entree ; of driving fast in certain places ; of 
walking on the grass-plots in the University quad- 
rangles, or in various places of public resort, and 
the like. Now the extra-territorial treaties do not 
put foreigners above the law, but simply provide 
that infractions of the law shall be judged by or in 
the presence of the Consul. Yet in all the coun- 
tries where these treaties hold, Europeans seem to 
make it a business to break through all the regula- 
tions, and disregard all the observances which they 
meet with.* In Turkey, for instance, they try to 

* Francisco Suarez the Jesuit, who wrote in the middle of 
1500, in his work called " Tractatus de Legibus ac Deo Legis- 
latore," insists on the necessity of foreigners respecting the laws of 
the country in which they may be living, and the examples he 
gives include usages as well as laws of universal application. 
He says : — 

" Moreover it is established from what has been said, that some 
have not rightly laid down that foreigners are bound to observe 
these laws only for the sake of avoiding scandal. This, indeed, is 



MISCONDUCT OF FOREIGNERS. 9 

ride fast past the Sultan's Palace, to keep their 
umbrellas up on passing in front of it by water : 
some may perhaps, some day, not dismount from 
their horses when the Sultan passes them in the 
street. In 1852, one of the English steamers which 
used to ply between Gralata and Buyukdereh used 
sometimes to land passengers at Arnout-Keuy, on 
a quay belonging to, and in front of one of the 
Imperial Palaces, then occupied by Ahmed Fethy 
Pasha, a brother-in-law of the Sultan. Notice was 
given more than once to the captain of the steamer 
to desist from this practice, which was not only a 

not true ; since otherwise, if the scandal were removed, they would 
not be bound by these laws on their own account, or in secret 
places. It must therefore be said, that granted that if an actual 
scandal should intervene the obligation would accidentally increase, 
yet the scandal is not the real foundation of the obligation, but 
at most it is the occasion or motive which moves the legislator 
to enact a law, the obligation of which does not cease, even if in a 
particular case the motive should cease. As if arms were pro- 
hibited in such a place or time for the avoiding of broils, and if 
women were prohibited from adorning themselves in such mode 
or other, that they may not cause scandal ; and nevertheless, after 
laws are laid down, the obligation is not so much on account of 
the scandal, but on their own account by reason of such laws. 
Therefore it stands in this case, that the necessity of avoiding 
scandals, and of preserving the good morals of the State, leads 
to the enacting of laws for all who may be found in such a place ; 
and therefore, after the law is established, the foreigner is bound 
to conform to it, not only by reason of avoiding offence, but also 
on account of the law itself, and due subjection to it, as has been 
explained." (Lib. iii. cap. 33.) 



10 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

breach, of etiquette, but a positive nuisance, as the 
steamer blew all its smoke into the palace windows. 
The captain, however, took no heed of these warn- 
ings, and, the very day on which he had received 
one, came alongside the quay to land his passengers. 
These were met and opposed by the servants of the 
Palace : some of the passengers remained discreetly 
on board and landed higher up ; but others, chiefly 
British subjects, landed in spite of the opposition, 
and some of them in the fray, in which wooden 
stools from the steamer were used, got their heads a 
little broken. One would think that they had de- 
served what they got, and would have been glad 
to let the matter end there ; and so Colonel Rose, 
Her Majesty's Charge d' Affaires, thought at first ; 
but their clamour was so great that he was at lengtb 
induced to make representations in favour of these 
disturbers of the peace, and Ahmed Fethy Pasha, 
in order to save the Porte further worry, paid a 
sum out of his own purse to satisfy the claimants, 
who were some Jew clerks of an English banker. 
It may be observed by the way, that the plying of 
the steamer at all was an illegality, as it came under 
the denomination of coasting trade. 

The conduct of the Indian officers and an English 
woman in a mosque at Cairo a few years ago was 
another instance of that misbehaviour which is en- 



OUTRAGE IN EGYPT BY BRITISH OFFICERS. 11 

couraged and brought forth by a sense of impunity. 
If the Pasha of Egypt had not been present, the con- 
sequences to these persons might have been fatal, 
and an international complication would then have 
ensued. A court-martial was held upon these officers, 
but as they were acquitted, they would not have 
been much discouraged from attempting the same 
practical jokes upon Her Majesty's Indian subjects, 
had not Sir Hugh Hose, the Commander-in-Chief, 
blamed the finding of the Court: they, however, 
escaped from any ill consequences of their mis- 
conduct. 

In Siam, Europeans delight in standing on the 
small wooden bridges over the canals when any of 
the Ministers or great nobles are passing beneath in 
their barges, because this is contrary to the obser- 
vances of the country ; and about the year 1858 some 
Germans would go and shoot pigeons at one of the 
temples, though this amusement was forbidden. On 
one occasion the priests and students sallied forth 
against the intruders and broke their guns over their 
backs. They complained to Her Majesty's Consul ; 
and though it was admitted that they were wrong in 
shooting the pigeons, the priests had to pay a large 
doctor's bill for the blows they had given. 

In Japan, the murder of Mr. Richardson and the 
subsequent burning of Kagosima arose from the 



12 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

wilful disregard of warnings given, to the effect that 
a certain road was not to be used during a certain 
time. Mr. Moss got into trouble, and caused the 
death of a Japanese officer through his determina- 
tion to shoot over ground where the Europeans had 
been prohibited from shooting. The French journal 
"La Patrie" observed at the time, that foreigners at- 
tempting to shoot in Windsor forest, or in the French 
forests, would at once find themselves within the 
grasp of the law, and that there was no reason why 
it should be otherwise in Japan. One of the worst 
cases of breach of the law is that given in a pamphlet 
called " Diplomacy in Japan," p. 41, in which Sir 
Rutherford Alcock, Her Majesty's Consul and Envoy, 
describes his having trespassed upon private land, 
not unawares, but in spite of being warned off, and 
the remonstrances of guardians appointed to keep off 
intruders. When the head of the community, placed 
over it to maintain the observance of law, sets such 
an example, what can be expected of the irrespon- 
sible, uneducated persons who form the British com- 
munity in Japan ? Yet the Japanese Government is 
made responsible for the consequences which may 
occur to any European who chooses to wander over 
the face of the country, and get himself into trouble 
by his unwarrantable conduct. If it be asked, 
" Would you have Government abandon its subjects, 



TREATMENT OF FOREIGNERS IN RUSSIA. 13 

and let them travel at their own risk and peril ?" it 
may be replied : Let them have in Japan the same 
measure of protection which Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment accords them in Eussia, as set forth in the 
papers presented to Parliament in 1864, relative to 
the case of Mr. Anderson, who had gone to Poland 
and got imprisoned on suspicion which was un- 
founded. He was nevertheless told that he had him- 
self to thank for having gone where he was not 
wanted, and that Her Majesty's Government de- 
clined to interfere in his behalf to secure him com- 
pensation for his detention. 

The author of the above-mentioned pamphlet on 
" Diplomacy in Japan " justly observed, that the 
principle of extra- territoriality is most anti-humani- 
tarian, since it implies that one nation doubts the 
good faith of another nation. The pretext now usu- 
ally put forward in support of foreign jurisdiction 
in certain countries is, that their legislation, and 
especially their punishments, are barbarous. Taking 
this ground alone, the capitulations are clearly obso- 
lete in Turkey ; for capital punishment is very rare 
there, and the prison life is less severe than in many 
European countries.* The assertion that the law- 

* " Nothing could exceed my surprise, I may say disappoint- 
ment, for I had strung my nerves for a trial on going into the 
Bagnio, to find it by no means a horrible place, but a very quiet, 



14 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

courts of any country are irregular or venal is not 
enough to justify the introduction of anarchy and im- 
punity to crime which follows upon a foreign jurisdic- 
tion treaty, since this assertion may be made, and is 
made, in many countries of Europe and America, in 
which no one would think of proposing to introduce 
foreign jurisdiction. This accusation, moreover, is fre- 
quently brought against the consular courts. Besides 
which, people who leave their country for their plea- 
sure or profit cannot expect to find all that they leave 
behind them ; and want of confidence in a foreign 
law-court is a matter entirely relative and of appre- 
ciation, which might, with equal reason, lead English- 
orderly- conducted prison. The galley-slaves of Toulon, I posi- 
tively assert, are one hundred times worse off than the inmates 
of the Bagnio. The only point of resemblance is in their food, 
equally bad in each, consisting of a kind of hog-wash, sufficiently 
nutritious to keep the bones covered : in all other respects they 
differ. The galley-slaves are chained in gangs, the Bagniotes in 
pairs. The former must sleep on boards, the latter may sleep 
on beds. In Toulon dockyard no horses or steam are employed, 
in order that the culprits may have the harder work. In the Con- 
stantinople arsenal the number of sailors on pay, whether the 
fleet be in commission or not, is so great that the convicts have 
scarcely anything to do. The former have not the advantages of 
religion; within the precincts of the Bagnio are a Mosque, a Greek 
Church, and a Synagogue. In Toulon there are four or five 
thousand galley-slaves ; in the Bagnio the number rarely amounts 
to one hundred, for a city containing about half a million of souls, 
and the chief rogues of the Empire." — Admiral Slade's Travels in 
Turkey, vol. i. p. 105. 



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN AST A. 15 

men to object to being subjected to the French sys- 
tem, of the judge conducting the prosecution, bully- 
ing the accused, and treating him as though his 
guilt were already proved. 

Granting that the punishments of some countries 
of Asia, such as China, are barbarous and cruel — as 
were those of Europe till a recent date — it would 
have been enough for the purposes of humanity if the 
foreign jurisdiction treaties had merely stipulated 
that no European should be subject to corporal 
punishment or torture, and that capital punishment 
should only be incurred for murder clearly proved, 
and limiting the punishments to be inflicted by local 
tribunals to fine, imprisonment, and banishment : the 
consul having the right to inspect the prisons and 
prison diet. It is said that imprisonment in tropical 
climates is too severe a punishment for Europeans : 
in those cases, banishment might be substituted for 
imprisonment : but it may be fairly urged by the 
Governments of Asiatic countries, that if foreigners 
come to their country and misconduct themselves, 
they must take the consequences of a climate to which 
nothing obliged them to expose themselves. 

A few extracts from early travellers may not be 
out of place, as they show that the administration of 
justice in Asia was not barbarous, though the punish- 
ments inflicted may have been severe. At the date 



16 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

at which some of these were written, justice in 
Europe was still stumbling blindfold between red- 
hot ploughshares. The following extract is taken 
from " India in the Fifteenth Century," vol. i. 
p. 14:— 

" It is remarkable that the administration of justice in 
India has been the theme of general admiration from the 
earliest times. Greek and Roman writers, from Diodorus Si- 
culus downward, have eulogised it ; Marco Polo witnesses on 
the same side ; and later Arabian authors confirm their fa- 
vourable testimony. El-Edrisi says, justice is a natural in- 
stinct among the inhabitants of India ; and they hold nothing 
in equal estimation. It is stated that their numbers and pro- 
sperity are due to their integrity, their fidelity in fulfilling 
engagements, and to the general uprightness of their conduct. 
It is, moreover, on this account, that visitors to their country 
have increased, that the country flourishes, and that the 
people thrive in plenty and in peace. As a proof of their 
adherence to what is right, and their abhorrence of what is 
wrong, may be instanced the following usage : if one man owes 
another money, the creditor finding him anywhere, draws a 
line in the shape of a ring around him. This the creditor 
enters, and also the debtor of his own free will ; and the latter 
cannot go beyond it until he has satisfied the claimant : but 
should the creditor decline to force him, or choose to forgive 
him, he (the creditor) steps out of the ring. Abd-er-Eezzak, 
also, speaking of Calicut, says, — Security and justice are so 
firmly established in this city, that the most wealthy mer- 
chants bring thither, from maritime countries, considerable 
cargoes, which they unload, and unhesitatingly send into the 
market and bazars, without thinking, in the meantime, of any 
necessity of checking the account, or of keeping watch over 
the goods." 



NO DROIT d'AUBAINE IN ASIA. 17 

Pinkerton, in his " Yoyages," vol. viii. p. 377, 



" The mode of procedure against debtors, as described by 
El-Edrisi and Varthema, and which Marco Polo, before them, 
states to have seen carried out against the person of the King 
of Malabar, is confirmed by Hamilton, with slight variation." 

Tavernier says, "Travels in Turkey and Persia," 
Paris, 1676 : — 

" This was not the only example which I could produce of 
the good order established in the whole of the East for the 
preservation of the goods of a foreigner, to however distant a 
country he may belong, who may happen to die in Turkey, or 
in Persia, or in India. For if these goods fall into the hands 
of Mussulmans, they shut them up carefully under lock and 
key ; and they "would never touch them until the true heirs 
of the deceased, clearly recognised as such by authentic proofs, 
came to claim them. If these same goods come under the 
direction of the English or the Dutch, they take an inventory 
of them, and give notice of it to the heirs, to whom they 
faithfully remit them ; and I doubt much if, in many parts of 
our Europe on such occasions, so much sincerity and exacti- 
tude is made use of." 

The following is from " Relations des Yoyages par 
les Arabes dans l'lnde et la Chine, dans le Neuvienie 
Siecle :"— 

" A person who wishes to travel from one province to 
another obtains two papers; one from the governor, the 
other from the eunuch. The governor's paper serves for the 
road, and contains the names of the traveller and his suite, 
with their ages and nationality. Every one who travels in 

C 



18 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

China, whether a man of the country, an Arab, or any other, 
cannot dispense with a paper, by which he may be recognised. 
And the paper of the eunuch mentions the money and pro- 
perty of the traveller ; and that is because there are on the 
roads people appointed to look into the two papers. And 
when a traveller passes they write for him, — Such a one, son 
of such a one, arrived here, of such a country, on such a day 
of the month, in such a year, with such property : so that a 
man may not lose his money or property. And if a traveller 
loses anything, or dies, it is known how this happened ; and 
it is restored to him, or to his heirs after him." 

Ibn Batoutah, in his " Travels," written in 1355, 
relates tbat — 

" It is the custom in China to take the portrait of whoever 
passes through the country. This is done to so great an ex- 
tent, that if a foreigner were to commit an action obliging 
him to fly from China, his portrait is sent to the different 
provinces ; so that search is made, and in whatever place the 
man represented in the portrait is found, he is arrested." 

Ibn Batoutah also mentions the custom of the 
Chinese of registering all the crew of sea- going junks, 
and of requiring an exact account of all of them from 
the master on his return to port. This writer also 
praises the precautions taken in China for the safety 
of merchants and travellers, a list of whom is sent 
on from one station to another, to ascertain the safe 
arrival of all of them and of their merchandise. 

The droit d'aubaine, which is the contrary of the 
above-mentioned honesty with regard to the property 



OPIUM WAR THE CAUSE OF ANARCHY IN CHINA. 19 

of deceased foreigners, was protested against at a 
very much, later date by Yattel and Grotius. 

With regard to the expediency of the foreign 
jurisdiction, it may be said that this system is the 
chief cause of wars, and that it is inexpedient for 
any state to incur the risks of war for the sake of 
securing license and impunity to the criminal class 
— for well-behaved people do not require the inter- 
vention of the Consuls. Earl Grey has set forth in 
the House of Lords, what has been generally ad- 
mitted, that our war with China, undertaken for the 
purpose of enforcing the importation of opium, weak- 
ened the Government of China, so as to produce the 
anarchy which now desolates that country. Lord 
Grey pointed out last session that the foreign juris- 
diction was producing the same effects in Japan, by 
stimulating the license of the European community, 
who find themselves released from all restraint ; that 
this trampling upon the self-respect of the Japanese 
must lead to war ; and that, after much bloodshed 
and expenditure, we shall perhaps reduce Japan to a 
state of anarchy like that we have brought about in 
China. Lord Grey was derided by Ministers, but his 
words were confirmed before the end of the session 
by the publication of Sir E. Alcock's requisition for 
troops, which, he says, may be wanted for service 
in other parts of Japan. In the meantime, he has 



20 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

called upon the Japanese Grovernment to provide 
barrack accommodation for these troops. On what 
footing are these troops coming ? Are they friends 
or foes ? Is this peace or war ? Has the Japanese 
Government given permission to land these troops, 
or are they going without permission? If so, by 
all international law, this is war, and should have 
been preceded by a Declaration of "War by Her 
Majesty, without which it is filibustering of the 
most cowardly description ; and Japan is being ca- 
joled into giving admittance to the vanguard of an 
army of invasion. The proceeding is so far from 
law and right, that it resembles the caricature of civil 
war. But though these troops enter Japan by means 
of a civil request for barrack accommodation, the 
consequences will most likely be tragical. In send- 
ing these troops, what object does the Grovernment 
propose to itself ? The eight companies which will 
shortly be in Japan are more than are wanted for a 
body-guard for the Consul, and too few for any seri- 
ous military operations. They are enough to cause 
serious alarm to the whole Japanese nation, and ap- 
prehensions of invasion and conquest, followed by an 
attempt to drive out the intruders. "We shall then 
have become involved in a war with a numerous and 
brave nation, in a portion of the globe the farthest 
removed from England — a nation which was pros- 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH NATION. 21 

perous and happy until we forced our intercourse 
upon them by intimidation. 

It may be that these forebodings may not be re- 
alised immediately, and that England may yet have 
an opportunity to draw back from this false position, 
into which she has been brought unawares in Japan, 
and that the warning and example of Ashanti may 
be followed. In the case of Ashanti, the nation was 
unanimous in approving the withdrawal of the 
policy of Governor Pine ; for the losses consequent 
upon pursuing it might have become very great, 
whilst the advantages must have been nil. In the 
case of Japan, the losses might be greater if the ex- 
pedition failed, since the forces on both sides would 
be much greater : if successful, the expedition might 
gain something by plunder, but it is not easy to see 
what advantage the State would derive ; and it 
cannot be supposed that the policy of England is 
influenced by so base a motive as the prospect of a 
war indemnity, however large. 

No ! wherever England is drawn into an ag- 
gressive war upon a weak and unoffending nation, 
the causes are the overbearing conduct of some 
agent desirous of bringing himself into notice, the 
greed of British settlers or adventurers, and the ig- 
norance and indifference of the British nation, which 
leaves these things in the hands of the Government. 



22 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

But after Lord Grey's warning last session the 
British nation can no longer plead ignorance of 
what is impending, and it will have itself to thank, 
and will be chargeable with the blame, if it suffers 
all the evils of invasion to be brought upon Japan, 
and a large number of our troops to be sent to that 
remote region, at a moment when the large quantity 
of troops which we have to maintain in India, 
Canada, and for the war in New Zealand, prevents 
our maintaining our ancient position in Europe, and 
would hamper us to a dangerous extent in case of a 
European war. 

The following were the Resolutions proposed by 
Earl Grey, as recorded in the " Orders of the Day" of 
the House of Lords, July 1, 1864 : — 

" The Earl Grey — To move the following Resolutions re- 
lating to Japan : — 

" 1. That the relations between this country and Japan 
appear to this House to be at present in a highly un- 
satisfactory state : 

" 2. That it is shown by the papers laid before Parliament 
by command of Her Majesty, that the Treaty concluded 
between Her Majesty and the Tycoon of Japan, on the 
26th of August, 1858, gives to British subjects in Japan 
rights and privileges which the Government of that 
country was avowedly reluctant to grant ; and was only 
induced to confer upon them through dread of British 
naval and military power : 

" 3. That the Government of Japan has also been induced 



EARL GREY'S RESOLUTIONS ON JAPAN. 23 

by this same fear to make with other European nations, 
and with the United States, Treaties generally similar 
to that which it has concluded with Her Majesty : 

" 4. That under the above-named Treaty British subjects 
are entitled to claim admission into certain portions 
of the territory of Japan, without being subject to the 
jurisdiction of its Government, Her Majesty having 
taken upon herself the obligation of enforcing on their 
part good conduct and obedience to the law : 

" 5. That the reports of Her Majesty's diplomatic servants 
show that Her Majesty has not been able to fulfil this 
obligation : the provisions of the statutes authorising 
Her Majesty's Consuls to try and punish British sub- 
jects for offences committed in Japan, and the means 
available for carrying these laws into effect, have 
proved altogether insufficient to prevent gross out- 
rages and insults from being inflicted on the people of 
Japan by British subjects, and persons assuming that 
character : 

" 6. That the animosity against foreigners, excited in the 
minds of the Japanese by these outrages and insults, 
has increased the repugnance long felt by the most 
powerful classes among them to increased intercourse 
with European nations, and has led to the per- 
petration of some murders, and several daring and 
desperate attacks upon foreigners ; diplomatic ser- 
vants and other subjects of Her Majesty having been 
among the sufferers from these acts of violence : 

" 7. That the Government of the Tycoon has professed the 
strongest desire to prevent the commission of these 
crimes, and to punish their perpetrators, but has de- 
clared itself unable to do so ; nor does there appear 
to be any reason to doubt the truth of these declara- 
tions, since two Tycoons and a Eegent of Japan have 
themselves been murdered, and one of the principal 



24 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

ministers narrowly escaped the same fate, owing to 
the hostility they had incurred from being supposed 
to favour an increased intercourse with foreigners : 

" 8. That in order to enforce a demand made by Her Ma- 
jesty's Government of redress for the murder of a 
British subject, it was found necessary to undertake 
hostile operations against one of the Daimios ; in the 
course of which considerable loss was experienced by 
Her Majesty's ships, and a large and flourishing 
Japanese town was burnt to the ground: 

" 9. That this experience of what has already taken place, 
leaves little hope for the future of its being possible 
to avert fresh collisions between Her Majesty's sub- 
jects and the Japanese, if the existing arrangements 
for regulating the intercourse between them are main- 
tained unaltered ; and if such collisions should occur, 
they must sooner or later lead to a war which would 
necessarily cost many lives and much money, both to 
this country and to Japan ; and would probably bring 
upon the latter the heavy calamities of general anarchy 
and confusion, from the destruction of its existing 
government ; while there would be no means of 
creating any other authority to replace it : 

" 10. That, apart from all higher considerations, the true 
interests of this country, and especially its permanent 
commercial interests, require that such calamitous 
results should not be risked by maintaining the exist- 
ing Treaty with Japan unaltered ; and that it is de- 
sirable that the provisions of this Treaty should be 
so modified, as to place the future intercourse of the 
two nations on a better footing for the future : 

"11. That it would, therefore, be advisable that Her Ma- 
jesty's servants should without delay enter into friendly 
communication with the Government of Japan, and 
with the Governments of other nations having Treaties 



EARL GREY'S RESOLUTIONS ON JAPAN. 25 

with Japan similar to our own, for the purpose of de- 
termining what changes it would be expedient to make 
in the provisions of these Treaties : 
" 12. That an humble Address be presented to Her Ma- 
jesty, to lay before Her Majesty the substance of the 
foregoing Eesolutions, and humbly to pray that Her 
Majesty will be graciously pleased to take the same 
into her serious consideration, with the view of adopt- 
ing such measures as may be found best calculated to 
avert war between this country and Japan, and to 
promote an increase of trade and friendly intercourse 
between the two nations, to their mutual advantage." 

Lord Grey's Eesolutions were called impracti- 
cable, because they were too practical, and at once 
cut at the root of the evil. But to see this, it required 
a mind used to take a wider view than one Kmited 
to the Parliamentary arena, and a Minister who 
cared to meet and prevent a difficulty and compli- 
cations, rather than to take the chance of their not 
immediately arising. Instead of which, Lord Grey 
was answered in a party spirit. It was unfortunate 
that he spoke from the Opposition benches and not 
from the cross-benches, from which such resolutions 
should have proceeded. His speech and that of 
the Bishop of Oxford remained, however, without a 
reply. The Duke of Somerset avoided the question, 
namely, the abuses of foreign jurisdiction, and con- 
fined himself to defending the just susceptibilities of 
the naval officers. These are always called upon to 



26 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

do the dirty work of the commercial men, who, after 
it is done, always try to get rid of the odium at- 
taching to it, by transferring it to the shoulders of 
those whom they have made tools of. Another Mi- 
nister, however, denied that Lord Elgin obtained 
the Japanese treaty by intimidation ; but Lord 
Elgin himself boasted, at a meeting of the Geogra- 
phical Society, that he had so obtained it. It is to 
be regretted that an English Minister should have 
said, — " If we were to say to the Japanese that we 
would modify our Treaty, we should inspire the Ja- 
panese, as we should any Eastern nation, with an 
opinion of our weakness, and a belief that we were 
afraid of their hostility, and were endeavouring to 
conciliate them by needless and unworthy conces- 
sions." This is the staple argument by which news- 
papers, of the class designated by Mr. Trevelyan as 
the " rampant Anglo-Saxon press," always stave off 
any measure of justice which is inconvenient to 
them. If a concession followed after a defeat, the 
argument would be good, otherwise, it is one which 
is contrary to the truth, that human nature and the 
human heart are the same all over the world, and that 
there is no difference between the minds of Western 
and Eastern nations. This argument supposes what 
is an absurdity, that Eastern nations do not know 
what justice is, or what their own rights are. 



ADMISSIONS OF EARL RUSSELL. 27 

Earl Russell, whilst opposing Lord Grey, in his 
speech virtually accepted his arguments, for he ad- 
mitted the truth and force of the fourth Resolution 
when he said : — 

" Suppose the case, and he believed such cases had oc- 
curred, where young Englishmen went beyond what they were 
entitled to by treaty ; in those cases Sir E. Alcock would cer- 
tainly have punished, if he had had the power." 

Lord Russell also conceded the main facts upon 
which Lord Grey and his supporters founded their 
arguments, in making the following statement to 
the House : — 

" That very morning he had received a long letter from 
Sir F. Bruce, lamenting the insolence and disregard of Chinese 
customs and feelings, which were exhibited by Englishmen in 
that country. He lamented their want of courtesy and im- 
proper behaviour to the Chinese, whom they regarded as an 
inferior race. He (Earl Russell) was afraid the same was the 
case in Japan. But conduct of that kind was not exhibited 
to the Chinese and Japanese alone ; for he found, in a book 
recently published, that the same kind of conduct was prac- 
tised towards the Indian race. He could not but lament that 
more courteous conduct was not shown by our countrymen, 
and that they did not pay more regard to the habits and 
customs of people, whom they were pleased to regard as a 
race inferior to their own* All that we could do was, that 



* " The Competition Wallah." See report of the debate in the 
" Morning Post,'' July 2, 1864. " The Times " report of this passage 
was inaccurate. 



28 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

which had been done by men like Sir F. Bruce and Sir E. Al- 
cock : that was, to refuse to take up the case of any of those 
men who had brought the evil on themselves by their own 
misconduct, and the use of language which was insulting to 
the natives, and to let them understand that it was not because 
they were citizens of a powerful nation that they were to be 
countenanced in such conduct." 

This last paragraph admits all that is urged by 
the opponents of foreign jurisdiction ; for it is not 
enough that men who misconduct themselves to- 
wards the natives of China and Japan should not be 
countenanced : it is necessary that such misconduct 
should be checked and punished, otherwise, as has 
been said above, if the obligations incurred under 
the foreign jurisdiction treaties be not fulfilled, this 
system sanctions and secures impunity, and produces 
anarchy ; for it leaves the outraged inhabitants, 
whose own tribunals cannot protect them, no remedy 
but to take the law into their own hands : it is use- 
less for them to appeal to the Consul, as will easily 
be understood, when two of Her Majesty's diplo- 
matic officers are singled out for eulogy because 
they refuse their countenance and support to those 
who have committed an outrage. It is not every 
Consul who can rise to even this height of official 
virtue in despite of the clamour raised against him 
by his " subjects/ * who expect to be supported, 
right or wrong. 



ENCOURAGEMENT TO DISHONESTY. 29 

As in former times our merchants traded with. 
Japan and other countries of Asia without extra- 
territorial treaties, it cannot be said that trade 
cannot be carried out without them : and as- 
suming the statement to be true, that the Japanese 
desire to trade with Europe, it may safely be con- 
jectured that the trade would have very much in- 
creased had it not been for the ill-feeling caused by 
the outrages which have been fostered by the foreign 
jurisdiction : and as this foreign jurisdiction, and 
the outrages and license which it is confessedly un- 
able to repress, are likely to involve war, it cannot 
be denied that such jurisdiction is not expedient for 
the state which undertakes it. 

Neither is it expedient for the individuals for 
whose benefit such treaties are made : it has a demo- 
ralising effect, and, setting aside outrages such as 
have been too frequent in Japan, it encourages dis- 
honesty, reckless trading, and speculations far re- 
moved from the spirit of legitimate commerce. For 
the purposes of legitimate trade, the foreign juris- 
diction treaties are far more powerful instruments 
than the case requires. It cannot be said that French 
and British subjects do not obtain their full rights, 
and frequently more than that, from the South 
American and other States, by means of the ordinary 
treaties and the diplomatic agents of their countries. 



30 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

In order to realise what the effect of these 
treaties is in Asia, let the reader imagine what 
would be the result if the troops stationed in London 
ceased to be amenable to the police magistrates or 
to be liable to arrest by the police, and if they were 
amenable only to their own Colonels ? Granting 
the best intentions to the Colonels, would the in- 
habitants of the metropolis feel safe, and would they 
long enjoy security and peace ? Yet this parallel is 
very far from being a complete one ; for the sol- 
diers are subjected to severe discipline, and a court 
martial has powers far exceeding those of any con- 
sular court ; and the soldiers are not like the Euro- 
peans in Asia — aliens in language, religion, and 
race, to the inhabitants of the country.* 

The following story, told to the writer of these 
pages by an Ionian gentleman, is an instance of the 
overbearing habits and hasty recurrence to diplomatic 
support, engendered by the system of extra-territo- 

* " China. — Accounts have been received from Hong Kong to 
July 29, 1804, and other ports to corresponding dates. The following 
is a summary of the news : — At Hangkow a painful affair occurred 
on the 27th June. It appears that the Chinese there had assembled 
in some numbers to celebrate the Dragon feast. They crowded 
the river in their boats, and all the standing-ground on the river- 
side was occupied by spectators. A Dr. Eice, finding the lower 
portion of his house, which has a river frontage, crowded with 
Chinamen, became irritated, and fired off his revolver among 
them (three shots), and killed an old man who had come to town 



OUTRAGES BY BRITISH SUBJECTS ABROAD. 31 

riality. This gentleman came to Europe, and at 
Paris went about the streets at night singing loudly. 
He was interrupted by a garde municipale, who told 
him to be silent. " Is not this a free country ?" he 
replied, and continued his singing ; upon which the 
" municipal " arrested him in the name of the law, 
and locked him up for the night in the watch-house. 
Next day he went to Lord Normanby, to whom he 
had a letter of introduction, and made a complaint. 
The Ambassador naturally told him he had better 
say no more about it, and stop to breakfast with him. 
After that, at Naples, he went to see the lique- 
faction of the blood of St. Januarius, and got to the 
front row, and, being of the Greek Church, he ridi- 
culed the miracle, and expressed his feelings in an 
unequivocal manner by his face. The crowd of 
fishermen became enraged, murmured and hustled 
him, and would have proceeded to greater lengths if 
the priest had not got him out of trouble by present- 
ing the reliquary to him, saying, " Baciatelo, baciatelo 

to witness the spectacle. For this Eice was tried before the Con- 
sul, and he pleaded ignorance of the fact that the revolver was 
loaded with hall. That it was so loaded there is no doubt, as the 
Chinaman was shot through the heart. The Consul, however, 
seems to have been satisfied with the plea, as he let Eice off with 
a fine of 500 dollars and deportation from China. The case is 
considered a very painful one, as a conviction for murder would 
certainly have been expected had a Chinaman been the culprit and 
Dr. Eice the victim." — Galignani, Sept. 17, 1864. 



32 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

con motto rispetto ;" which, lie did, and so escaped. 
In this case, also, he did not scruple to make a com- 
plaint to Sir William Temple, who also naturally 
took no notice of it. 

With regard to the third point, viz. the possi- 
bility of the state, in whose favour foreign jurisdic- 
tion treaties are made, fulfilling the obligations 
which it has contracted, of enforcing the observance 
of law and order by its subjects, it is easy to prove 
that, on several grounds, it is illusory to hope for 
any satisfactory administration of justice from the 
Consuls in causes arising between their subjects and 
the inhabitants of the country. Some of these 
causes of defective justice operate equally against a 
right decision between two parties, both of whom 
are subjects of the Consul : but these sort of cases 
are of lesser importance, since they do not lead to 
international complications. These causes are : — 

lstly. Ignorance or deficient knowledge of the 
language of the country. Yery few European Con- 
suls have a knowledge of the language of the country 
sufficient for the purposes of justice. On the other 
hand it may be observed, that all the members of 
the Turkish commercial tribunal know French well, 
and that in Japan many of the officials know Dutch, 
and the Japanese Government has promised to pro- 
vide a sufficient number knowing English. As the 



CAUSES OF DEFECTIVE CONSULAR JUSTICE. 33 

difficulty of different languages presses equally on 
all, it is more equitable that the advantage should 
rest with the majority, or the inhabitants of the 
country, rather than with the few, or the foreigners. 

2ndly. A Consul under the foreign jurisdiction 
system is, at the same time, both judge and advocate 
of one of the parties. This is entirely contrary to 
the first principles of administration of justice. A 
Consul, under the ordinary treaties, is the official 
advocate of the subjects of the power which he re- 
presents, and it is difficult for him to divest himself 
of this quality when acting under the extra-territo- 
rial treaties. Under the Turkish treaty, where the 
defendant is a European subject in a criminal trial, 
the cause should be tried before the Turkish judge, 
and the Consul can only act as assessor, and see 
that the trial is fair, and give his opinion with 
regard to the sentence : but in many cases this has 
been over-ridden, and the Consul constituted sole 
judge. 

3rdly. The persons who hold the office of consul, 
which, under these treaties, is that of judge, are 
generally unfitted for, and unworthy of, these posts. 
The smallness of the sum voted by Parliament does 
not allow Her Majesty's Government to secure the 
services of first-rate men for these posts ; but, on the 
other hand, the Government may be blamed for the 



34 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

multiplication of consulships, and for frequently ap- 
pointing men who, it must know, ought not to be 
trusted with such large powers. Many Consuls are 
appointed simply because they happen to be in the 
country, to which they have come as adventurers, 
and their services are cheaper than those of a man 
sent out from England.* Trading is incompatible 
with the functions of a Consul exercising foreign 
jurisdiction. Levantines, or subjects of the country, 
are not only totally unfit for the post of consul, but 
their appointment is a violation of treaty ; neverthe- 
less, many such are to be found in the Foreign Office 
list. If Consuls are wanted in so many places, and 
the means are wanting for appointing proper and 
respectable persons, these appointments should be 
filled up by persons with the title of consular agents, 
without any judicial power, and whose functions 
should be limited to correspondence with higher 
officials of their Government. 

4thly. The Consuls are, in general, on terms of 
too great social intimacy with the subjects over 

* For instance : an individual escaped from a certain country 
leaving behind him creditors, some of whom he had ruined; the 
debts filed against him amounted to 7715/. 14s. He arrived in 
another country, where he managed to get appointed Her Majesty's 
Consul, and, aided by his official position, he enriched himself. 
His creditors, however, have been unable to obtain any money 
from him. This person has retired from the post, after filling it 
longer than was good for the country. 



CAUSES OF DEFECTIVE CONSULAR JUSTICE. 35 

whom they are set, for them to be able to act 
impartially towards them in the administration of 
justice.* 

5thly. The Consuls are, in general, not men of 
sufficient position to command the respect of the 
merchants ; and the forms of English law are such 
as to leave the Consuls little power to check out- 
rages and misconduct on the part of their subjects. 

6thly. The position of a Consul, even the best 
of the British Consuls, cannot be compared to that 
of an English magistrate, who has an English press, 
audience, and clerk, to guide and check him. If 
the newspaper press so often complain of Justices' 
justice, what an outcry would they not raise if they 
had an insight into Consuls' justice ! 

7thly. Where foreign jurisdiction exists there 
are from ten to twenty Consuls with equal powers, 
so that when subjects of various European states are 
engaged in a case, the confusion is endless and 
justice hopeless, each Consul standing out firmly 
for his own " subject." 

8thly. Even if a Consul were disposed to ad- 
minister strict justice it would be most difficult for 
him to do so, on account of the clamour which would 
be raised by a community such as the European 

* A similar objection has been made to the multiplication of 
County-court Judges in England. 



36 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

community in Japan. The case of Mr. Moss is an 
example of this, and others could be mentioned. 

9thly. The Consuls being frequently removed 
from one post to another, cannot be equally cog- 
nisant with a local tribunal of the antecedents of 
the persons they have to deal with. 

lOthly. The Consuls have no police at their dis- 
posal sufficient for carrying out the law and main- 
taining order. 

The above-mentioned circumstances are causes 
enough to render the action of the consular body 
ineffective for the purpose of maintaining order 
amongst their subjects, many of whom, it must be 
remembered, are the outcasts of Europe, especially 
at Constantinople and Alexandria. Unless, there- 
fore, a very great reform is made — and the cir- 
cumstances do not allow of much reform — the Gro- 
vernments exercising foreign jurisdiction cannot 
flatter themselves that they fulfil their obligations 
in this respect. It may be doubted whether the 
very questionable justice administered by the Con- 
suls is of any advantage to Europeans in civil cases ; 
and the only persons who profit by the system are 
the ruffians, assassins, and thieves, that render the 
streets of Pera and Gralata unsafe after dark. 

England, Austria, Italy, and Greece, have the 
honour, at Constantinople and in Egypt, of pro- 



IMPUNITY OF MALEFACTORS. 37 

» 

tecting the worst malefactors : the robberies and 
murders committed at Pera are generally attri- 
butable to Maltese, Ionians, Croats, Italians, and 
Greeks. The French Consuls in Turkey are, on 
the whole, those who give least cause of complaint 
in this respect. People in England will hardly 
believe or understand the impunity and freedom of 
malefactors in Pera. The following anecdote will 
best illustrate it : — The dragomans of the con- 
sulates go every day to the chief police-ofhce, and 
claim their respective subjects who may have been 
taken up during the night on their predatory 
excursions. On one occasion, the British or the 
Austrian dragoman — it does not matter which — 
claimed a thief, who, in the usual course, was re- 
leased. Two days later, a merchant had a large 
sum of money in his house, and having been warned 
that his house was likely to be attacked, he applied 
for and received four Turkish policemen to guard 
his premises. An attempt to break in was made in 
the night by a band of burglars, who did not know 
the house was guarded : resistance was made, pistols 
used, and two of the burglars killed. The dead 
bodies and the captured survivors were brought to 
the police-station; and next morning, when the dra- 
gomans came to claim their own, the Zabtieh Pasha 
conducted one of them to the dead burglar, and 



38 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

said, " There is your subject : you had better have 
left him in my hands two days ago, and he would 
not have had an opportunity of returning to his 
evil ways, and be in the state in which you now 
see him." 

The establishment of British Consular Judges at 
Constantinople and Smyrna has not much improved 
matters : more of the tedious and expensive forms 
of English law may have been introduced ; the rest 
remains much as before. Now, however, that we 
are no longer burdened with those most litigious 
of mortals, the Ionians, there will be much less for 
those courts to do; and perhaps they, as well as 
several of the small consulships, may be abolished. 

Some idea of the discretion of the British Con- 
sular Court at Constantinople may be formed from 
the following facts: — At the end of 1859 a Greek 
vessel left Constantinople for the Black Sea, and 
either on account of contrary winds, or for some 
other reason, it anchored off a small village in the 
Bosphorus, near the entrance of the Black Sea ; and 
the master and crew all went on shore to while away 
the time at a cafe. During this time an English 
tug- steamer came by, and seeing no one on board 
the Greek vessel, although it was in port — for the 
whole of the Bosphorus is a port — considered it as 
abandoned, and towed it back to Constantinople. 



BRITISH CONSULAR COURT AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 39 

The Greek crew were much, surprised ou finding 
their vessel had disappeared, and returned to Pera, 
where they discovered what had become of their 
vessel, which was detained by the Tug Company 
under a claim for salvage. They then applied to their 
Consul, who wrote to Admiral Slade, the Turkish 
commander of the port, asking him to cause the 
restitution of the vessel. This Admiral Slade did ; 
but the Tug- steamer Company, choosing to act for 
themselves, collected a body of Ionians, and sent 
them to board the vessel and eject the crew. The 
Greek Consul again referred to Admiral Slade, who 
was obliged to have the Greek vessel retaken from 
the Ionians for its owners by a Turkish man-of- 
war's boat. Now, it will appear hardly credible, 
but it is true, that an action was brought by the 
Tug-steam Company against Admiral Slade for his 
proceedings in this matter. And this action against 
a Turkish official (for Admiral Slade' s British na- 
tionality had nothing to do with his official acts) 
was entertained by the Consular Court ; and, though 
Admiral Slade denied the competency of the Court, 
it gave a judgment against him for damages. 

Some idea may be formed as to the possibility of 
enforcing the observance of law and order in various 
Asiatic countries by means at the disposal of the 
European Consuls, by an inquiry into the adminis- 



40 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

tration of justice in our own possessions in Asia : 
it may be expected that the law will be better ad- 
ministered to our fellow- subjects of Asiatic origin 
by English courts of law and magistrates, than it 
would be in the case of Asiatic foreigners by Eu- 
ropean Consuls. This comparison may be drawn 
by a few extracts and references to cases which 
have lately occurred. 

The Reverend Gr. P. Badger, late Government 
Chaplain in the Presidency of Bombay, writes : — 

" Varthema's reiterated encomium on the impartial adminis- 
tration of justice, wherein he corroborates the testimony of 
ancient Greek and Roman authors, reveals another striking 
feature in the Indian polity at this period. That no declension 
in that respect has resulted from the supersession of the old 
native tribunals by British legislation cannot be doubted ; 
nevertheless, the two systems are frequently contrasted by 
the people, to the decided disparagement of the latter. The 
chief defect complained of, however, is the comparative tardi- 
ness of our law ; for, under the Oriental mode of procedure, 
punishment follows hard on the offence, and cases are dis- 
posed of without the intervention of those intricate forms and 
delays, and without the heavy fees, which seem inseparable 
from a British law-court. There are, unquestionably, many 
among the better-informed natives who appreciate the even 
and solid justice ultimately aimed at and dispensed ; but the 
masses revert with regret to the good old days, when awards 
were attainable in much less time, and at far less cost, than at 
present. This subject reminds me of a wealthy Arab pearl- 
merchant from the Persian Gulf, whom I met at Muskat up- 
wards of two years ago, and who occasionally formed one of a 



DRAWBACKS TO BRITISH JUSTICE IN INDIA. 41 

party of evening visitors, whose opinions I frequently endea- 
voured to elicit on points connected with British policy in the 
East. The theme under discussion was the administration of 
justice in India ; in the course of which the Arab merchant, 
who was well acquainted with Bombay, spoke as follows, as 
nearly as I can remember his words : — There can be no doubt 
that the Government of the English is the best in the world, 
and no Eastern Government can be compared to it. Their 
law, too, is excellent ; and their judges and magistrates incor- 
ruptible : still, there are serious drawbacks in the way of ob- 
taining justice. Knowing this by experience, I long forbore 
pressing a case against a man who was indebted to me to a 
large amount ; but a Parsee acquaintance eventually persuaded 
me to put myself into the hands of an English lawyer, who, 
he was sure, would get my claim settled promptly and econo- 
mically ; and, moreover, gave me a note of introduction to his 
legal adviser. Thanking him for his courtesy, but still wary 
of the machinery of the law, I took the note to a Banyan, and 
begged him to read it for me. It contained this sentence : 

' My dear -, I send you a good fat cow ; milk him well.' 

I need not tell you that my suspicions were confirmed, and 
that I preferred a voluntary compromise with my debtor to 
an involuntary milking at the hands of the English advocate. 
The anecdote, whether true or fabricated, is illustrative of a 
very common notion among the natives respecting the ob- 
stacles in the way of securing prompt justice from a British 
court of law in India."* 

Reference to the pages of the " Competition 
Wallah," and especially to the mention there made 
of the trial of the missionary, Mr. Long, for his 
translation of the Bengali play " Ml Darpun," would 

* Introduction to Varthema's Travels, p. lxxiv. 



42 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

go far to prove that English law-courts in Asia are 
by no means the same as English law-courts in 
England.* The extraordinary charge delivered by 
Sir Mordaunt "Wells at Mr. Long's trial could not 
have been delivered in England. The author of the 
"Competition Wallah" has quoted the strongest 
passages in " Nil Darpun," and the reader will be 
able to form his own opinion of them, which will 
assuredly not lead him to agree with the epithet of 
obscene, which was affixed to that publication ; 
neither will he find anything in it to justify the 
sentence of one month's imprisonment inflicted on 

* It would appear from the following, that legislation as well 
as the administration of the law in India is falling off. 

Act I. of 1849 enacts, sect. 2, that " all British subjects, all em- 
ployes, and all persons who shall have dwelt six months in British 
India, whether apprehended there or elsewhere, shall, when de- 
livered to a magistrate, be amenable to the law for all offences 
committed by them within any foreign territory; and may be com- 
mitted to trial on the like evidence as would warrant their com- 
mitment in India." 

It follows that a Dutchman, who thirty years ago passed six 
months in Bombay, might be tried by the Court of Singapore for 
an affray or a nuisance committed by him in Bangkok. What 
would the Dutch say to this ; or we, if the parts were inverted ? 

So if he had never been in British India before he committed 
the offence, but had fled after its commission to Singapore, he 
would be safe for five months and twenty-nine days, but would be 
liable to be tried under the Act as soon as he had completed 
his six months' residence. 

So though the offence had been committed not in the country 
which gave him up, but some other. Thus the Dutchman, who 



DRAWBACKS TO BRITISH JUSTICE IN INDIA. 43 

Mr. Long : especially when he is told that the " Ee- 
port of the Indigo Commission " contains far more 
severe strictures upon the indigo planters than any 
contained in " Nil Darpun." 

It is not surprising that outrages should occur in 
Japan, when a case like the following could occur in 
the British port of Singapore, in the year 1861 or 
62. The master of a British merchant-vessel, at 
anchor in that port, saw two Malays approaching his 
vessel in a boat, in the daytime. It is not clear what 
he could have apprehended from only two men. 
However, he hailed them, and then took a gun and 

once passed six months in Singapore, might be tried in Calcutta 
for an offence committed in Siam, if given up by the King of 
Burmah. 

The offences are those for -which he might he committed for 
trial in India. Therefore an Arab might be seized and tried in 
Bombay for buying a slave in Egypt. Further, a Siamese subject, 
who had passed six months in Singapore, might be sent to the 
Court of Singapore for trial for a crime committed in his own 
country. 

In the former cases, foreign states would have a right to object 
to our thus dealing with their subjects for offences not committed 
in our territory. In the latter, the tax-payer might object to the 
expense of punishing such offenders. The Act does not require 
that all such cases shall be tried, but gives the Government the 
power to have them tried. It leaves to the good sense of the Exe- 
cutive the task of neutralising the extravagance of the Legislature. 
What a wide door for abuse ! The act is too wide, both as respects 
offences and offenders : the former should be limited to acts held 
to be crimes by all nations, the latter to subjects of the British 
Crown. 



44 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

fired, first at one and then at the other, knocking 
them both over. One remained in the boat wonnded, 
the other fell over into the sea and was seen no more. 
As the body of this man was not to be found, the 
master of the merchant- vessel was only put upon his 
trial for shooting with intent to injure. Notwith- 
standing that the indictment was so much less se- 
rious than the circumstances of the case admitted or 
required, the jury recommended the prisoner to 
mercy, and the judge passed so slight a sentence 
upon him that the governor had to urge him to re- 
consider it, and to inflict a severer punishment. 

At Pulo-Pinang an Arab had left a large sum 
of money for the Malay schools, under the care of 
trustees. These trustees, having disagreed amongst 
themselves, the matter was brought before the 
court, in the time of the predecessor of the pre- 
sent Recorder. The result was, that the capital was 
and is detained by the Court, and the interest has 
been applied to Christian schools. Now, English 
law is clear upon the duty of respecting the inten- 
tions of testators, as has been proved especially in 
the case of the trusts founded under Lady Hewley's 
win.* 

The mate of a European merchant-ship had mur- 
dered his captain, and was condemned to be hanged. 

* See the case of the Attorney- General against Shore. 



BRITISH OFFICERS INACCESSIBLE. 45 

There was nothing in the case to excuse the mur- 
derer, or to raise any sympathy in his favour ; yet 
some Europeans regretted his execution, and said it 
was so horrible that a white man should be hanged, 
on account of the bad effect it would have upon the 
natives. The same feelings made the Singapore 
merchants object to the employment of European 
convicts in their town. Now, as the natives know 
very well that there are criminals amongst the 
Europeans as well as amongst the people of other 
nations, the only effect of giving way to these preju- 
dices would be to lead the inhabitants of Asia to 
suppose that our justice was one-sided, if they never 
saw a sentence carried out upon a European. 

It is, however, chiefly in minor matters that 
European administration presses hard upon the 
people of Asia ; for whilst, throughout that region, 
the officers of Government are always accessible — 
and in many countries petitions can be presented to 
the Sovereign himself — British officials are almost 
inaccessible, or their manner of receiving petitioners 
is such as to deter people from presenting themselves. 
What the people of Asia expect, and what they get 
from their own governors, may be illustrated by 
the following examples : — Yiscount Escayrac de 
Lauture relates, in his travels in the Soudan, that he 
was sitting with a Turkish official, and that an Arab 



46 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

came with a complaint, and preluded it with a long 
account of his genealogy. Monsieur de Lauture 
asked the Turk afterwards why he had not cut him 
short, and the answer was, " If I had not listened to 
the whole of his story he would have gone away 
and said that I would not do him justice." Mr. 
Eastwick, the late Secretary of Legation in Persia, 
relates in his book that a Persian said to him, " You 
would do to govern in Persia, for you know how to 
listen to a man's story." It may be said that the 
time of officials ought not to be wasted, but there 
might be a medium between the two practices. In 
England we recognise the principle of a fair hear- 
ing, when an Old Bailey lawyer takes up the time of 
the Court with apparently irrelevant questions to the 
witnesses ; and the judge reminds the prisoner that 
he has had a fair trial and a patient hearing.* 

But the climax of lawlessness may be said to 
have been attained in the following occurrence, 
which, as it took place in Her Majesty's dominions, 
gives the measure of what may be expected in China 
and Japan. Some sailors of some Queen's ships went 
on shore on leave, and came across a Hindoo proces- 

* It is a pleasure to be able to mention, amongst others who 
uphold the dignity of English law and justice, and cause them 
to be appreciated in Asia, such men as Sir Benson Maxwell the 
Eecorder of Pinang, and Mr. Thompson, late Queen's Advocate in 
Ceylon. 



CLIMAX OF LAWLESSNESS. 47 

sion, and tried to force their way with it into a 
temple. They were repulsed with some bruises. 
Next day the crews resolved to avenge this affront, 
and a party of officers and men set out in the evening, 
and, with a regularity which would have done them 
credit in the presence of the enemy, left men with 
the boats and outposts on the road, and proceeded to 
the temple to force their way in. A fight ensued 
with sticks and stones ; some of the Hindoos were 
hurt, a lieutenant had two front teeth knocked out, 
and a seaman had his arm broken. The magistrate 
of the place wrote to the captain to complain of the 
riotous conduct of his men; and the captain wrote 
an intemperate letter in reply, regretting that more 
of the natives were not hurt instead of his own men.* 

If this could go unpunished within the Queen's 
dominions, how much more likely is it that outrages 
will be committed in countries where the foreign 
jurisdiction treaties secure impunity to offenders ? 
If this outrage had been committed in a foreign 
country, compensation would probably have been 
claimed for the injured officers and seamen. 

These treaties could hardly work effectively, even 

* The time and place of this occurrence are not given here, 
since the writer is not attacking individuals, hut the anomalies of 
the foreign jurisdiction, and the abuses which are its necessary 
results. 



48 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

with, the best machinery ; and they are always open 
to the objection that they degrade and lower the 
governments of the countries in which they exist, 
and create an unduly privileged position for the 
Consuls and subjects of the powers in whose favour 
they are made. What is, moreover, the machinery 
actually at work for carrying out the obligations of 
these treaties ? — Consuls having the power of magis- 
trates, but without legal training or social status, 
with no police to speak of to carry out their orders, 
or to cause them to be respected. The Consuls them- 
selves are generally either traders or adventurers, or 
persons who have failed in other professions. In the 
Levant many Consuls are pluralists ; that is, they re- 
present, in their own persons, several powers. On 
official reception-days such a Consul pays several visits 
successively to the Governor, merely going out of the 
room to change his decorations, and having himself 
again announced as Consul of another country : such 
an official is named in Levantine French, " JJn Consul 
de plusieurs potences." Readers of the "Times" will 
not have forgotten the scandal caused by the sham 
insurance of the "Poseidon;" a ship imagined for 
the purpose by one of Her Majesty's Consuls. The 
offender in this case was unfortunate in being dis- 
covered, and that, too, by an insurance company, 
which would not allow the case to be hushed up ; 



THE CAPITULATIONS OBSOLETE. 49 

otherwise, lie was not a singular instance of what is 
to be met with, in the consular body. It was from 
this individual, and others of the same calibre, that 
Lord Carlisle and Mr. Senior drew the facts with 
which they enlightened the world, after a tour too 
hurried for anything to be gained by their own ob- 
servation, but during which they made themselves 
into reservoirs, to be filled by every one they came 
across, without selection. 

Meantime, until the obsolete capitulations are 
done away with in Turkey, and the treaties with 
other countries altered, so as not to be, as at present, 
sources of war and of impunity for crime, without 
any counterbalancing benefit, the Foreign Office 
should aim at diminishing the number of consulships, 
so as to be able, with the means allowed by Parlia- 
ment, to improve the more important consulships, 
and to fill them with responsible and respectable 
persons. Official persons have derided Lord Grey's 
Resolutions as being impracticable. But this is 
saying, in other words, that the subject was new to 
them ; that they had not yet reflected on the damage 
done by the extra-territorial system ; that they had 
not yet considered how it was to be remedied ; that 
public attention had not yet been drawn to the sub- 
ject ; and that pressure had not yet been brought to 
bear upon them, so as to make them feel the neces- 

E 



50 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

sity of doing something : and on the rule of " Quieta 
non mover e," it is impracticable to alter anything 
until the necessity for doing so has been clearly de- 
monstrated and loudly called for. Thus it is at pre- 
sent impracticable for Government to enforce upon 
Railway Companies the establishment of communi- 
cation between guards and passengers. This benefit 
will eventually be obtained, but not until other ca- 
lamities have roused the public to make a greater 
outcry.* 

Another suggestion deserves the attention of the 
Foreign Office, as it may avert much mischief; and 
in order to carry it out, it requires nothing more 
than the assent of the Foreign Office to the propo- 
sition. Whereas it is not competent to one magis- 
trate to appoint another person as magistrate, but 
a person can only obtain such a nomination through 
the Lord- lieutenant ; it is not fitting that when a 
Consul, under the foreign jurisdiction system, goes 
away from his post on leave, he should be able to 
leave in his place, as acting consul, any person whom 
he may select and recommend to the Foreign Office 
as fit for the duty : since the persons chosen by Con- 
suls to act in their absence are necessarily, in general, 
unknown to the Foreign Office : they are frequently 

* The need of these calamities may perhaps he superseded hy 
the act of the Queen. 



CONSULS SHOULD NOT APPOINT DEPUTIES. 51 

persons without education, and of low position ; and 
they are necessarily without that feeling of respon- 
sibility which attaches to a person in a regular ser- 
vice, who has something to lose by misconduct. It 
should, therefore, be established for the future that 
the locum tenens of the Consul should be limited in 
his functions to correspondence with his superiors ; 
and that more important matters should remain in 
abeyance until the return of the Consul : or if there 
were much business, that the Embassy should depute 
a competent person to act in the absence of the Con- 
sul, but that the appointment of an acting consul 
should not depend so much, as heretofore, upon the 
Consul. The French system provides against this 
defect, by the appointment of a Chancelier to each 
consulate. But this would add greatly to the expense 
of consulships, many of which already have not work 
enough for one man. This suggestion might seem 
capable of recommending itself as it stands ; but it 
derives additional weight from the fact that it was 
the selection by Mr. Coles, Her Majesty's Consul at 
Jiddah, of Mr. Page, to be acting consul in his ab- 
sence, which led to the massacre at Jiddah. Mr. 
Page was of a very humble station in life, and was 
known as one who drank before this occurrence. The 
massacre was represented as a fanatical outbreak, 
but it originated solely in national feelings, and the 



52 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

irritation caused by the precipitate — and, as the 
people of the country had good reason to think — un- 
just hauling down of the Ottoman flag from a vessel 
on which its owner, an Ottoman subject, had hoisted 
it ; and by the subsequent drunken abuse and insults 
heaped upon the people by the acting consul. 

This calamity would not have occurred if this 
unfit person had not been put in a position which 
enabled him to provoke it; and it cannot be said 
that British interests would have suffered by the 
post having remained vacant during the Consul's 
absence ; nor even if the post were abolished alto- 
gether : for there are no English at Jiddah, nor 
British trade, though British goods find their way 
there very well from Egypt, unassisted by the 
intervention of Englishmen. 

It is a mistake to suppose that the appointment 
of Consuls can produce trade : where no prohibitive 
duties interpose, goods follow the laws of supply and 
demand, and the demand depends upon their qua- 
lity more than upon consular protection. A very 
large quantity of British goods find their way to 
Central Asia by means of Greek houses in Persia : 
that trade is unprotected, and stands on its own 
basis ; some years ago it received a check from the 
covetousness of some dishonest parties, who sent out 
inferior goods, the colours of which would not stand : 



UNFIT PERSONS MADE CONSULS. 53 

this act discredited British, goods very considerably 
in the markets of Central Asia. 

If persons unfitted by education and position are 
appointed as consuls and acting consuls, they not 
only do disservice to their own State, but the ap- 
pointment is most offensive to the country in which 
it is made ; and it is not fair upon the high officials 
of the countries we have been speaking of, who are 
remarkable for their courtesy and urbanity, to force 
them to receive men entirely deficient in manners 
and education — such as might perhaps pass muster 
at a small trading-port in Europe, where their 
duties are confined to attending to shipmasters and 
bills of health, but who are unfit to be brought into 
that frequent contact with the governor of a pro- 
vince which the foreign jurisdiction treaties render 
necessary. This is not merely an Asiatic prejudice, 
for a paragraph has been lately going the round of 
the papers to the effect that the last Japanese Em- 
bassy to Europe (in 1864) was composed of persons 
of low extraction. If it is so, the Japanese Go- 
vernment has been acting on the principle of 
reciprocity. 

Amongst other vexations to the Japanese, is that 
caused by the exigencies put forward by the Euro- 
pean Consuls for lodging in the temples.* Similar 

* " Diplomacy in Japan," pp. 10-15. 



54 OUR CONSULAR SYSTEM. 

requisitions are often made in other countries; and 
this contrasts ill with the niggardly reception given 
to embassies and deputations from Asia to England, 
whose extensive relations with Asiatic countries oc- 
casionally force the inhabitants of those countries to 
have recourse to England. 

An article appeared in the Brussels " Eevue Tri- 
mestrielle," of July 1863, from the pen of Monsieur 
John Mnet, a Belgian Vice-consul in Egypt, which 
deserves the attention of those who wish to study 
the action of the Consuls in the Levant. The ex- 
tracts which follow will show that the baneful effects 
of the foreign jurisdiction have not been overstated 
in the foregoing pages. 



55 



II. 



MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

The following Extracts are translated from an Article 
written by M. John ~N"inet, a Belgian Vice- 
Consul, and Acting Consul at Alexandria, and 
published in the Brussels "Revue Trimestrielle" 
July 1863. 

~No doubt that, from a Christian point of view, and 
taken in the abstract, certain usages of Eastern 
peoples present themselves to European criticism 
as real defects and as great vices ; but with a little 
more of evangelical charity, perhaps, we should 
judge them less severely. "We should take more 
into account the influences of origin and climate, 
and the material necessities and social obligations 
derived from these usages ; we should take into 
consideration men and circumstances ; we should be 
able to distinguish what is good ; and in finding an 
explanation of what shocks our observation, we should 
be less harsh in attacking, and more sincere in our 



56 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

judgments. "We should at length, arrive at this 
conclusion, however unedifying it may be, that, 
under the cloak of civilisation with which we deck 
ourselves, we, modern Christians, hide a mediocre 
body, and a mind more full of hypocrisy than we are 
disposed to admit. 

If, after a general awakening, the Mussulman, 
Buddhist, and idolatrous nations were suddenly 
and spontaneously to discover that they could not 
live without railways, without fermented liquors, 
without fashionable goods from Paris and London, 
without European fabrics, &c, and if they opened 
both their ports and their treasures to the pre- 
cipitate incursion of the products of manufacturing 
Christendom, Christendom at the outset would ask 
for nothing more. The question of religion would 
very readily, and with joy, be left on one side, 
saving that it would be brought in later for the 
purpose of satisfying fresh appetites, sprung from 
the prey already devoured.* 

But we have not arrived at this point. From 
the outset, and on many points of the globe, the 
fault was committed of not taking the bull by the 

* The author is proved to be right in asserting that Christianity 
is made the pretext and the cloak for avarice and greed, by the 
fact that the adoption of it has not saved the New Zealanders from 
the greed and spoliation of the colonists. — Translator. 



PRETENCE OF RELIGION. 57 

horns. The bale of cloth was sometimes put on 
the robe of the Missionary, and the Cross was 
clumsily sent as the forerunner of the yard measure, 
with its sequel of odious consequences. The reli- 
gious feelings of those nations designated as bar- 
barous were wounded, and remained timid and sus- 
picious. From that point to violence and reprisals 
the distance was not great. Politics became mixed 
up in the matter, and cannon made itself heard. 
Christendom, which especially distinguishes itself in 
the art of imposing its laws, and of mutual destruc- 
tion by fire and sword, declared the nations who 
were rebellious against its civilisation to be enemies 
of the Cross. Thus the human race has dug the 
abyss which separates nations, from whom true pro- 
gress might have obtained everything, if no attempt 
had been made upon their beliefs ; to which they 
are, and have the right to be, as much attached as 
we are to ours. 

The Japanese, for instance, obstinately refuse to 
open their country to us. Our inferiors in many 
accessory branches of manufacturing art, they are 
our equals and superiors in many others, especially 
having regard to their wants and tastes. The pro- 
ducts of Europe tempt them but little ; and if by 
reason of some treaties imposed upon them, rather 
than negotiated, they receive a few specimens 



58 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

adapted to their consumption, it will be in order to 
imitate them at first, and at the end of a short time 
to surpass them in quality and cheapness. 

Ancient sumptuary laws have early rendered the 
inhabitants of those islands of a remarkable sim- 
plicity in their manners, which makes them reject 
as useless those gold and silver trinkets to which 
Christians attach so much value. Moreover, spiri- 
tuous liquors in Japan are met by a prohibitive duty 
(35 per cent ad valorem), as being the source of 
corruption of the people, and of evils of which 
this nation is still ignorant. In short, they con- 
sider themselves happy as they are, governed by 
their own laws, whether good or bad ; they can live, 
and do live without us, and beseech us earnestly to 
leave them alone. 

It is not that they disdain all the advances of the 
Christians indiscriminately. In times long gone 
by, missionaries from old Europe penetrated into 
the country, where, thanks to a protecting tolerance, 
they made numerous proselytes. The Dutch, those 
cold calculators, merchants in their very souls, 
whose admirals, ministers, and residents, forestalled 
the reign of the dollar, whilst acting as buffoons at 
the court of the Tycoons, had the exclusive monopoly 
of Japanese commerce for a long time within their 
hands. But instead of upholding the standard of 



PRETENCE OF RELIGION. 59 

the Cross above love of lucre, these austere Pro- 
testants, preferring Mammon to the religion of 
mercy, joined with the inhabitants, and assisted 
them to massacre thirty thousand Christians be- 
longing to the country ! If at that time civilisa- 
tion showed itself but little scrupulous in the choice 
of means, when its material interests were at stake, 
has one the right to require or expect much from it 
at the present time ? It is, therefore, very allowable 
to lift with a sceptical hand the curtain which con- 
ceals its real designs. There is a desire for the silk, 
the tea, the wax, and the camphor of the Japanese ; 
and it is sought to convert them to the products of 
Europe — to its stuffs, its fashions, its spirits .... 
let us say it — to its vices. The nation will enrich 
itself, it is said, and become civilised. Let us be 
more honest, and add — it will first become corrupt, 
will become weak, and will be divided, and, sooner 
or later, it will be conquered. 

Meantime, all the European powers are at pre- 
sent seized with a mania for negotiating with Japan. 
His Excellency Mr. Stampfli, himself, the President 
of the Swiss Republic, has not escaped from the 
reigning epidemic. He has just sent to the Tycoon 
a watchmaking mission, at a great cost, charged 
with offering to this Prince, who is said to be 



60 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

dead, the compliments of Switzerland — Absinthe of 
Couvet, cigars which do not draw, watches of 
Geneva, and bears from Berne : the whole under 
the Dutch flag, and in exchange for a treaty of 
commerce to be negotiated.* 

Here is certainly wherewithal to hasten the suc- 
cess of the great humanitarian cause ; and if the 
Japanese do not submit to these wonderful efforts of 
modern civilisation, it must be admitted that their 
ears are very dull and very long. 

The case has been pretty nearly the same with 
Turkey and the Osmanlys ; every one uttered male- 
dictions and invectives against them. Even now, 
it is the fashion to make their funeral oration from 
time to time, accompanied by kicks, after the manner 
of the ass in the fable; unless, however, when the 
requirements of a doubtful policy draw upon them 
the honour of flattery as exaggerated as it is ridicu- 
lous. There is no middle term : the club or incense. 
But incense is what is least made use of. 

Is it then forbidden, or in bad taste, to speak 

* The spirit of gain and coveteousness on this occasion made 
the Swiss as regardless as others of infringing the rights of the 
Japanese, and as eager to put an unjust pressure upon them as 
though they had never learned the lessons of William Tell, or as 
though their own existence as a nation did not depend upon the 
more or less that ideas of justice may still prevail in Europe. — 
Translator. 



EASTEKN QUESTION INVENTED BY DIPLOMACY. 61 

the truth, concerning the Mussulmans ? and may 
one not do so without being taxed with partiality 
by some, with lukewarmness in religion by others ? 

When a man writes what he knows, and pub- 
lishes that which is fact, he deserves, at least, some 
good will ; and his doing so is, at any rate, worth 
more than perorations on all occasions, upon things 
which people have not seen, and of which they are 
ignorant, merely for the sake of putting in a word 
and making a noise. 

In the presence of the surprising and various 
events which have been unrolled before our eyes 
since the painful Eastern question has been invented 
by a diplomacy in quest of strong emotions, since 
that hidden power has made a rampart of it, behind 
which she shelters the most unavowable theories of 
intervention and annexation, would it not be fair to 
inquire, in good earnest, whether the head, in this 
so-called corruption, has compromised the soundness 
of the body? Whether the head and body have 
not, on the contrary, been cured at Sebastopol ? 
The efficacity of the remedy applied in the Crimea 
cannot, however, be considered doubtful. There 
were there many great doctors — too many, perhaps 
— assembled later at the Congress of Paris. Now, if 
the patient is better — which seems to be admitted 
by everybody, the collateral heirs alone excepted 



62 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

— would it not be urgent to allow him a better 
diet, more air, more sun, and more freedom in bis 
exercise ? 

Since tbe Crimean war tbings bave changed their 
aspect. Those events have been a lesson, and tbe 
Ottomans have learned that they had friends, and 
that their religion was admitted to the same pri- 
vileges which are accorded to other beliefs which 
respect themselves, and know how to make them- 
selves respected. The veil which interested hands 
had extended during so long a time over Turkey 
has fallen for ever, and political life has been re- 
stored to a nation which it would be unjust not to 
recognise as worthy of the sympathies of Europe. 

Let us now examine, without passion, political 
or religious, impartially and coolly, which side has 
been in the wrong, and, leaving the Crescent on one 
side, inquire how civilisation, including the rayah 
element, has behaved itself towards the Mussulmans. 

Let us first acknowledge that the most patri- 
archal hospitality has ever been held in honour by 
the Mussulmans, for whom it is a sacred duty, which 
they have never forgotten to practise towards who- 
ever has partaken of their bread and salt. There 
are features in the characters of nations which may 



HOSPITALITY OF THE MUSSULMANS. 63 

pass for exaggerated, and which sometimes belong 
more to the realm of legend than to reality based 
upon facts. But the noble virtue which we are here 
speaking of has nothing of a usurped reputation : it 
is as lively with the lowly as with the great ; and it 
is general, for it knows no distinction between ene- 
mies and friends, believers and unbelievers : it sees 
only brothers in those who shelter themselves under 
the tent of the nomad, or who take their places at 
the table of the powerful. 

*£> vt; v!> *Sf 2$£ 

Here, then, is a national virtue acknowledged and 
proved ; and which has all the more value since, in 
the progress which Turkey is going to make, it will 
be one of the bases absolutely necessary to success. 
A primitive and hospitable nation is near touching 
the goal which the march of humanity lays down 
for it. 

Those Europeans who have traversed the Levant 
as patient and conscientious observers — those who 
have lived in it, and have directed commercial estab- 
lishments during many years, will acknowledge with 
us the manifest inferiority in which the Mussul- 
mans have been placed with regard to protected 
rayahs and other Christians. This remark applies 
particularly to the great centres of population, 
where the European community, being more compact, 



64 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

gives to its members more confidence, and by the 
same stroke diminishes their discretion and their 
reserve in their habitual relations with the non- 
Christian subjects of the Porte.* The Levantines 
themselves — and here we mean Catholics, Copts, 
&c, natives of the country, are sometimes no better 
treated than their Mussulman fellow-countrymen; 
and they feel all the more the effects of the supe- # 
riority which the Europeans arrogate to themselves, 
since they ought, on the contrary, to expect pro- 
tection on their part with regard to the Mussulmans. 
In six-tenths at least of quarrels provoked by daily 
contact, and which are brought before the consu- 
lates or submitted to the jurisdiction of the bashaga 
(police), the Christians are the aggressors. Eight 
cases out of ten are decided in their favour. To 
curse one's neighbour's religion, even in joke — the 
Jew the Christian's, the Mussulman the Jew's, the 
Christian the Rayah's — is a habit unhappily too 
deeply rooted in this country, where creeds are as 
varied as the kinds of animals in Noah's ark. And 
what a superfluity of base expressions fill the public 
vocabulary in these cases ! It can hardly be con- 
fessed that these are the first phrases which the new- 

* After the Treaty of Paris a Turkish squib represented a 
Syrian Christian insulting a Mussulman, who replied, " How dare 
you do that? I am your equal now ! " — Translator. 



LICENSE OF EUROPEANS. 65 

comer hastens to learn to stammer. It seems as 
though there were a resolution to treat the inhabi- 
tants as roughly as possible in all the divers circum- 
stances of business life. "We ask, Of what advantage 
are the benefits of that civilisation, of that Christ- 
ianity especially, of which we boast with just cause, 
if we are only able at the outset to discover in it a 
pretext to oppress the weak, and whatever person 
does not think like ourselves? 

We are not exaggerating. Europeans all, who- 
ever they may be, show themselves inclined to the 
sweets of this petty despotism, which makes them 
consider the usages of foreign countries to which 
their lot brings them as absurd and heavy to be 
borne. They hasten, it might be said, to break the 
bonds which, in their own countries, restrained them 
within the limits of law and justice. 

Look at that fellah, in whose barley you go shoot- 
ing without license — you and your dogs — whose 
garden you visit, filling your pockets. He is silent 
for the most part, to avoid the buffet which your 
ready hand has in store for him, or the curses which 
your mouth already murmurs. Would you act thus 
in Europe, where the game-laws are as numerous as 
they are vexatious, and where the rights of property 
are respected under pain of the severest penalties ? 
From the rights conferred by the capitulations which 



66 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

bear hard upon the self-respect of this nation, we 
rush to the abuse ; and if some inhabitant, injured 
in that which is dearest to man — his national and 
religious dignity — mildly ventures to make a very 
natural observation, " Civis Bomanus sum," is your 
reply, whilst you humiliate him with your look and 
gesture. 

Whilst the charcoal-dealer, as was said at Paris 
in 1830, is master in his own house — whilst the 
London cockney considers his home as his castle, 
can we take it ill that the Mussulmans ask for 
reciprocity ? Their rich empire, so full of resources, 
so fertile, so well situated, so productive, calls us to 
its bosom : is it, then, to require too much of the 
European emigration, as well as of the native 
Christians, that the one and the other should behave 
decently towards the nation which to-day tolerates 
them and might love them to-morrow ? If Islamism 
is everywhere pitied as the representative of a world 
of relative ignorance and barbarity, would not our 
duty as Christians be to seek to ameliorate it by 
good conduct and by example ? If, in short, Euro- 
peans, more skilled and gifted with great perspi- 
cacity, have discovered a weak side in this nation, 
developed by a corrupted financial system, by salaries 
too low for responsible posts, by a relatively poor 
mode of living, is it very worthy of more advanced 



GOOD FAITH OF MUSSULMAN MERCHANTS. 67 

nations to speculate upon these faults and to enrich 
themselves by converting them into vices ? Ex- 
ample, such is the flag of the real pioneers of civilis- 
ation, that which would inevitably lead the Otto- 
mans into a path more analogous to our habits and 
customs, and more favourable to our dealings with 
them. This nation, though belonging to different 
origins, is not the less intelligent, nor less capable of 
reform and progress. 

Less than fifty years ago, the simple word of a 
Mussulman merchant was worth a bond in the 
bazar ; his yes, with a clasp of the hand, was his 
signature, his acceptance ; and on payment becom- 
ing due, the collector of the Christian merchant 
never left the counter of his debtor without being 
satisfied. 

Now it is no longer so, or, rather, such is no 
longer the rule, but the exception. Consular pro- 
tections abusively granted, and the resources of our 
vitiated civilisation, have altered the usages of the 
good old time. The buyers in the bazar accept, it 
is true, tamassuks, or bills of exchange on stamped 
paper, but they pay with more or less regularity, 
and know all the tricks of the trade ; and even 
know, if necessary, how to spoil the wool by making 
a hole in it. They eat out of china, make use of 
silver plate, their abodes grow handsomer, are 



68 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

adorned with Lyons stuffs, with the finest up- 
holstery, with mirrors, and their tables grant hospi- 
tality to the forbidden fruit, but their good faith 
loses on the one side what luxury and vanity gain 
on the other. And yet, notwithstanding the ravages 
of this foreign leprosy, the old dethroned commercial 
honour is still living; it is to be found amongst 
the old men, hoary with age, who have continued 
to be good Mussulmans, fanatical perhaps, but 
honest. 

In fact, what part of our character is it that we 
Europeans allow to come to the surface and show 
itself to the eyes of these nations in our transactions 
with them? An immoderate love of lucre, which 
deserves in general a baser name. If they are acute, 
we are cunning ; if they employ cunning, we have 
recourse to deceit .... Could we remain their 
equals in anything ? Oh no ! we are Christians ; 
we must take the lead in everything, even in evil. 

In Egypt, the inhabitants name (Dhahah 
franghi) gold of Europe, the jewels of a false 
standard, with which the country abounds. The 
compliment bears its moral lesson with it, and we 
must own that in many circumstances it is not 
usurped. 

It would not be necessary to go far in order to 
find amongst the Christian houses, native and others, 



COINING OF TURKISH MONEY IN ENGLAND. 69 

fortunes of a comparatively recent date, of which 
the source would not bear examination. These 
houses would be seen to be mixed up in foul deal- 
ings with the Custom-house, which put into their 
coffers customs dues which have not been paid : 
these houses have engaged themselves in operations 
with coin of foreign, and even Eastern fabrication, 
in dubious transactions, which, better than others, 
bring out in relief the naive good faith of the 
Mussulmans. In short, at their base, gigantic 
tricks might be discovered, which the novelists of 
real life would lay hold of eagerly for sensational 
chapters. 

In 1858, two Frenchmen were taken up in 
London, at the request of the Ottoman Government, 
and convicted of coining false Turkish money: a 
third culprit, the chief of them, a man who bore 
a great name and had occupied an honourable posi- 
tion in Egypt, succeeded in crossing the Straits 
before the visit of the police. The investigation of 
this affair revealed that a capital of several hundred 
thousand francs was to be furnished by a great Paris 
house, in prepared gold, for secretly coining Turkish 
pounds in England ; the coiners provided themselves 
with copper on the spot for fabricating small change. 
At Alexandria, as was stated in a letter forming 
part of the case, Turkish piastres had been clandes- 



70 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

tinely struck for a long time ; and what is remark- 
able is, that at the same time a Greek merchant 
of Manchester was arrested, at the complaint of the 
Ottoman Embassy, for having caused Ottoman 
money to be struck at Birmingham, which he ex- 
ported to the Levant by the barrel. 

This is in what the industrious operations of the 
French company were principally to consist. The 
Porte was at that time withdrawing from circula- 
tion some old coins, with a large proportion of alloy, 
which in moments of crisis had received a fictitious 
value, comparatively very high. This bullion re- 
turned to the treasury at a conventional rate much 
above its intrinsic value — in some cases the double. 
The margin, therefore, was attractive to the coiners, 
who had had dies engraved in London, which 
imitated the coins withdrawn from the currency in 
all their defects and imperfections ; after that they 
succeeded admirably in making them old, by the aid 
of a corrosive liquid. A beshlik, or five piastres, cost 
these merchants a little less than two piastres; an 
altmishlik, or one piastre and a half, about a piastre ; 
and so on. 

Let us quote a few other examples out of a 
thousand. We will keep back the places and dates, 
and will only mention the facts. To fleece a Turk 
at the cost of his skin is a practice allowed by the 



COLLUSION OF MERCHANTS WITH OFFICIALS. 71 

worshippers of the dollar ; it is the rule and the law. 
Whoever does not follow it is a fool. And then 
each one keeps as much as he can within the lame 
clauses of the Code ... of what is possible. In Eng- 
land and the United States, where the blacklegs of 
trade have raised close shaving and sharp practice to a 
science, the acts which we relate would evidently- 
pass for Arabian tales. Truth may sometimes appear 
improbable. 

The government of a large province or pashalik 
produced a certain manufactured article, of general 
use. B., the vekil or overseer set over this branch 
of the public revenue, had a friend C, a famous mer- 
chant and a native Christian. C. asked B., Have you 
manufactured much this year ? Between ourselves, 
the article is sought for ; be discreet. When you have 
got heaps of goods ready, get your master to sell, 
and give me notice ; I will be the buyer, and we 
shall understand one another." This advice is ac- 
cepted and acted upon. The conversation then 
changes its scene, and continues in this wise : — B. says 
to the Governor, "Our warehouses are full, the trea- 
sury is empty, the moment is favourable ; let us 
sell and replace the goods." The Governor : " Are 
you convinced of it ? Yery well ! you have full 
leave." Exit the vekil. Last scene. C. having 
received notice : "I buy the whole in a mass at the 



72 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

price of yesterday, and pay at once a large sum 
on account to the treasury. How many pieces ? 
500,000 ? Very good. Do not announce the sale 
before twenty-four hours, and when the bazar pre- 
sents itself say, 'Too late for this season, my 
lambs ; come back next year, and we shall see about 
it : everything has been sold/ They will then be 
obliged to come to me. I will keep the price well 
up, and we will see one another afterwards." 

The bazar sometimes bought at one or two 
francs' profit on each piece, and this game was 
renewed each year. The actors were in too high 
a position for the complaints of the timid public to 
reach the ears that were interested in hearing them. 
However, a day arrived when the master, more 
suspicious or better informed, demanded the ac- 
counts from the overseer, who then disappeared. 
The fortunate merchant, a Christian not under pro- 
tection, would find the atmosphere heavy, and the 
sun burning to his eyes. He would hide by day 
and travel by night, until a ship took him away in 
quest of a Russian or Chinese passport ; with the 
assistance of which, in returning to his country, he 
preserved his position, and added a padlock to his 
well-filled coffers. It will, perhaps, be objected, But 
why does the Mussulman vekil become the accom- 
plice of the Christian merchant? We refer these 



EVASION OF THE EXPORT DUTIES. 73 

wise critics to the serpent and the apple of the 
garden of Eden. Do not receivers make thieves ? 

On another occasion it is Filan* a protected sub- 
ject — of England, let us say — who, trusting to esta- 
blished usages, exported a prepared or manufactured 
article under the name of raw material — thanks to 
a certain conventional mark. The prepared goods 
were worth 200 piastres ; the raw material, 90. The 
export dues were 12 per cent ad valorem, and the 
quantities exported enormous. An opinion may be 
formed of the importance of this illicit gain, weigh- 
ing equally upon the treasury and the honest ex- 
porter. 

Other skilful practitioners, Europeans let us say, 
so as to generalise their nationalities, used to sell to the 
Government . . . colossal lanterns, impossible can- 
nons, first-rate frigates going twenty knots an hour, 
the proof after the letter. These masterpieces having 
been delivered, there was some delay before sending 
in the accounts, of which the profits alone would 
have sufficed to pay the Greek loan ! Then came 
the quarter of an hour of Eabelais : the Government 
cried out . . . protested . . . when the Deus ex machina 
intervened, with a consular hat on his head, and the 
treasury paid up. All the wheels having been well 
greased, the noise ceased, leaving each one satisfied, 

* Such a one. 



74 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

even the injured party, for worse might often happen 
to it, in the shape of diplomatic complications ! How 
many trains of artillery, how many bridges, how 
many whole arsenals, how many railways, what 
mountains of furniture and of coal, almost a fraction 
of England, have not been swallowed up — and paid 
for — without complaint, by this excellent pashalik ! 
The bottom of the sea from Rhodes to the Bosphorus 
would literally be paved with these goods. "We will 
say with the fabulist, I leave aside even better things 
than these ! "We will willingly join with the com- 
mon sense of the public, which is already asking, 
" But why was the Government so simple ?"* Ca- 
price and flattery lead to the tree where perches the 
crow, and at the foot of which the large family of 
foxes permanently promenade themselves. The first 
will always be delighted to hear himself called the 
phoenix of the dwellers in these woods, and the cheeses 
which fall into the mouth of the second are always 
worth a lesson which is never turned to account. 
Has the commercial world in England forgotten the 
remonstrances which the Liverpool houses addressed 

* The Government was not altogether simple; these abuses were 
owing to the pressure put upon the Government by Consuls, whom 
it had to keep satisfied for peace sake. One Consul in Egypt 
bought two houses cheap to sell them dear to Said Pasha. Other 
Consuls, or their relations, obtained orders for goods, locomotives, 
&c, which were highly remunerative and amounted to bribes, or 
black mail levied by the Consuls. — Translator, 



REMONSTRANCES OF LIVERPOOL MERCHANTS. 75 

on several occasions to the Foreign Office, on the 
subject of numerous cargoes of cotton, fraudulently 
exported from the Levant, without payment of the 
duty of 12 per cent ad valorem, and which were sold 
in the above-mentioned town at prices which were 
ruinous to the honest importers ? The affair is too 
recent to have escaped the memory of the victims 
of those culpable operations, which gave a very un- 
desirable notoriety to Christian houses of the first 
rank. 

In reflecting on the unusual character of the facts 
which we have just related, and which have been 
taken at hazard from amidst hundreds of the same 
kind, this question naturally presents itself : How is 
it that these different Governments allowed them- 
selves to be thus cheated, without seeking to cut at 
the root of the evil ? To us Europeans, indeed, the 
remedy seems at first sight within easy reach, not- 
withstanding that the old continent is full of abuses 
and rotten institutions, from which it has great diffi- 
culty in freeing itself. 

In the Levant it is still less easy. Everything 
seems to conspire in favour of these frauds. The 
administrative machine is complicated. Red-tape 
flourishes in all its splendour. There a day may be 
passed in a public office in running from one room 
to another, without any other result than a series of 



76 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

seals placed by a sort of automatons upon a sheet of 
paper. The office clerks are numerous, under-paid, 
and their salaries generally more or less in arrear. 
Their families are in a similar condition ; people 
must live, and bakshish, when it knocks at the door 
of the official, is all the more alluring since these 
scribes, who are well aware of the ways of the world, 
say to themselves with some sort of reason, There 
is no great sin in gathering the crumbs fallen from 
the table of this rich merchant, who sits down 
without ceremony at that of our master. Little by 
little, abuse, at first shamefaced and solitary, became 
general. Now it forms almost the rule in the minds 
of those who know the value of their signature, and 
•who have an intuition of the dubious character of the 
transaction, the papers of which are submitted to 
them in order that they may affix to it the " Open 
sesame" required by the treasury. 

Let us suppose the case of a supply of cartridges, 
furnished by a European merchant to the Porte. If, 
instead of 2,000,000, only half has been consigned, 
and that notwithstanding this error a receipt has 
been taken for the whole, as is customary enough in 
those parts ; if, in order to obtain this document, a 
certain weight has had to be placed in the pocket of 
him who has signed the precious document ; if, in 
short, a fox is in the path prowling round the house, 



FRAUDS OF THE MERCHANTS. 77 

it will readily be understood what a feverish haste 
the contractor must experience who has already dis- 
counted in presents a part of his profits. Another 
example : A. has delivered cannons to the Govern- 
ment, which commission he has received without 
being limited as to the cost ; he wants to gain as 
much as. possible — two hundred per cent if he can, 
but he must avoid the rock of fixing a price higher 
or lower than that invoiced by B., another contractor 
of the same calibre. A. goes to look for X., the comp- 
troller of accounts, who, for the sake of value re- 
ceived in proportion to the service rendered, pro- 
duces the wished-for document. The figures are 
then neatly brought forward to a level, and in this 
way the Porte has the immense advantage of being 
served at a fixed price. From the lowest to the 
highest each functionary knows the motives for the 
anxiety of the vendor, and gets his work paid for 
according to its deserts. The hardest nut . to crack 
is, without contradiction, the last. The comptroller, 
this king in his department, has his speech of gold 
and gestures of brass ; he looks, and speaks little ; 
he waits, and listens. Two words are enough for 
him ; as soon as they have sounded, the " sta bene" is 
given. 

In Egypt, book-keeping, the revision of accounts, 
fiscal administration in short, is in a great measure 



78 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

in the hands of native Christians, whose aptitude in 
all respects makes them fit for this kind of work. 
These scribes, or Mahlems, have a remarkable skill in 
all that pertains to accounts ; they could teach some 
of the cleverest in that branch in Europe. Their 
memory is admirable, nothing escapes them; and 
the system which forms the basis of their capabilities 
is so complicated that it renders them indispensable : 
without them, it is impossible to understand any- 
thing of it. It is in these hundreds of books, of 
pages, and written folios, that lies the secret of their 
power. "Before having that scoundrel hanged/' 
said a Pasha, " he must give in his accounts ; and as 
he will never bring them to a close, his life is safe." 
It is grievous, as may be seen, that the Mussul- 
mans have not yet formed themselves to a profession 
which would give them insight into their own affairs.* 
The country would see its advantages in it, and the 
razzias practised upon the public treasury would, by 
degrees, be reduced to more presentable figures. 
There is a great objection to the employment of only 
certain individualities, belonging to another creed 
than that of the State, in an administration which, 
in addition to special talents, requires a great respon- 
sibility. Whenever these men are found in default, 

* This applies more to the Cairo than to the Constantinople 
financial offices. — Translator. 



CHARACTER OF THE ARMENIANS. 79 

they infallibly have some protection or other to in- 
voke. Sometimes they may be compelled to make 
restitution; but for the most part the guilty pass 
without wetting themselves between the large drops 
of the shower, and the evil continues* 

At Constantinople it is the Armenians who, 
more or less, hold in their hands the thousand 
threads of finance. That nation has furnished its 
contingent of capacity in various branches. Bank- 
ing and the dragomanship in Constantinople and 
Egypt have been the steps which have raised many 
of them to honours and fortune. The Armenians 
have the qualities and the faults of the Levantines.* 
At Constantinople they mint money, manufacture 
powder, farm the asphalt, and in general fish in 
waters where the largest fish are to be found. This 
nation is distinguished for its activity, its prudence, 
its aptitude for litigious matters, — the whole united 
to a certain affability which pleases and attracts. 

As soon as the Osmanlys shall agree to live a 
little less as fine gentlemen, reforms will become 
easy, because, seeing things from a nearer point 
of view, they will be able to judge them better. 
As soon as appointments become more stable and 
better paid, as soon as they can be properly filled 

* They are much superior to the Levantines ; they have more 
domestic virtues, and less vanity. — Translator. 



80 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

by instructed Mussulman subjects, protected or 
punished by equitable regulations, the administra- 
tion will become honourable. Until then all other 
attempts at improvement will be useless, and will 
feel the effects of the corrupt head of the Greek 
proverb. 

It will not require a long time for these popula- 
tions to arrive at the required degree of maturity, 
for they are intelligent, and form themselves and 
learn very readily. Reforms in this direction have 
already begun in Egypt, where the education of the 
masses is more advanced, and begins to produce 
good results. The great leprosy which gnaws at 
the Empire has always been seated in the ignorance 
of the people, for whom reading and writing were 
formerly unusual talents. ~No newspapers, few 
books, no literature to instruct and raise the nation 
to a sense of its own dignity. History was a sealed 
book, and when war brought misery and humilia- 
tion upon the country, the people hardly troubled 
itself to ascertain the causes. In its eyes the all- 
powerful Sultans represented science, and fatality 
explained the rest. As in the last century, Yoltaire 
and his disciples were infallibly quoted as the source 
of all ills, so the influence of Christendom was for 
them the universal cause, to the account of which 
taxes and requisitions were set down. Thence that 



ATTITUDE OF EMBASSIES AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 81 

inbred suspicion, those instincts of revenge, of 
enmity, which have always been assumed to be the 
necessary consequences of differences of religion. 
Thence that feeling of discomfort which still exists 
virtually in the relations of the Mussulmans with 
the Christians, and which sometimes lead them to 
act summarily towards them. They (the Mussul- 
mans) thus put the wrong on their side, whilst in 
the outset the rights of the case, and an amount of 
reflection and patience, would have made them gain 
their cause. 

But there is another cause to be assigned for 
the difficulties amidst which the Empire struggles, 
although these may be considered as being sin- 
gularly diminished, if not on the eve of giving place 
to a more normal and prosperous state of things. 
This cause lies in the comparatively vicious repre- 
sentation of the powers in relation with the Sublime 
Porte. 

The greater number of European Envoys are 
sent to Constantinople, either to favour and promote 
a policy hostile to Turkey, or to make only a brief 
residence at the seat of a government of which they 
know neither the habits nor the susceptibilities. 
A few of them, better informed respecting the men 
and the affairs of the country, are not free in their 
action, and are under the necessity of submitting to 

G 



82 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

certain instructions, tending to prevent them from 
openly counteracting their colleagues in a policy 
which is feared, or which seems necessary. With 
the aid of the intrigues and proximity of Russia, 
Constantinople is, on that very account, the point 
where the spirit of strife has heaped up the greatest 
amount of inflammable and explosive materials. A 
rather hasty word causes the fleets and armies of 
Christendom to converge there. A military tune, 
beaten with the finger-ends upon the ministerial 
window-panes in Downing Street, reproduces itself 
in cannon-shot on the shores of the Bosphorus. 

Notwithstanding these truths, which are known 
to all the Courts, the old system still prevails. 
England and Austria alone seem to have understood, 
that when the fittest man has been found for a post 
he should be left in it as long as possible, so that 
the experience which he has obtained of the affairs 
of the country may not be lost to everybody when 
he changes his residence. It is certain that the act 
of accrediting an ambassador to a court does not of 
itself necessarily imply a friendly understanding or 
conformity of political views ; but our observations 
upon the spirit which, with a few honourable ex- 
ceptions, animates the diplomatic body at Con- 
stantinople, however novel they may appear to the 
antagonists of the Porte, are none the less borne out 



ATTITUDE OF EMBASSIES AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 83 

by facts. The Envoys arrive at their posts as they 
would at the camp of a hostile general, who cannot 
be attacked on the field of battle, and whom they 
seek to conquer in detail by a system of opposition 
in a manner instinctive, if it is not the result of 
higher instructions.* 

We do not hesitate to assert, that so long as this 
kind of odious routine exists the difficulties which 
we have mentioned will remain as an insurmount- 
able obstacle in the path of the reforms which 
people seem to wish to impose upon Turkey, without 
giving her the time to set about them by her own 
means. 

As a contrast to this picture, let us render a just 

* Another usage, not conducive to harmonious relations be- 
tween the Porte and the foreign representatives, is the custom 
of employing dragomans for their communications ; the motives 
for this custom are obsolete, since every Turkish foreign minister 
will be henceforward, and has been for many years, as conversant 
with the French language as the foreign representatives : and it 
is time that this custom should fall into disuse. It is disadvan- 
tageous to both parties. The European governments cannot be 
so well served by Levantines related to others in the service of 
a rival government, as by their own accredited agents. The 
dragomans form a confederation, whose interest is to create busi- 
ness to magnify their own importance : they go daily to the public 
offices with or without business, and waste much of their own and 
of other people's time. As a class they are ill-educated, Levantine 
in feelings and opinions, neither showing any fitting respect to the 
Turkish ministers, nor susceptible of being respected by them. — 
Translator. 



84 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

tribute of praise to the minister, pre-eminent amongst 
the honest men who are an honour to Great Britain, 
and who has represented her in the Levant during 
a long and brilliant period. Lord Stratford Canning 
may be quoted here in support of the English maxim, 
" The right man in the right place." A stranger to 
the pettifogging of the chanceries, of which Constan- 
tinople has always been the theatre,* having no 
other care nor other flag than his duty, he combined 
the exercise of it by indicating to the Porte the road 
to prosperity. Nevertheless, without neglecting the 
interests of the Queen, Lord Stratford was the sin- 
cere friend of Turkey — the only one, it may be said ; 
because, with private inclinations which led him not 
to counteract what in his conscience he believed to 
be the good of that country, he represented, with a 
perfect rectitude of judgment and a remarkable dig- 
nity, the frank and honest side of English policy. 
He was always to be met at the head of those at- 
tempts at improvement which must place Turkey 
in the rank which the Treaty of Paris has assigned 
to her. He advised and sustained the cabinets and 
the men who were true friends of progress — of 
that slow and solid progress which founds and conso- 
lidates states. All his efforts tended to the restor- 

* If there is any drawback to this statement, it has been owing 
to the dragoman system. — Translator. 



LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE. 85 

ation of the dignity, and to the integrity of the 
Ottoman Empire. We need not say that he had as 
a natural antagonist the Representative of Russia, 
whom the French Ambassador sometimes seconded, 
if not from identity with the views of the Mus- 
covite Cabinet, at least from the feelings of an old 
national rivality. It was in the midst of this noble 
struggle of every day, and after a most honourable 
career, that the English Ministry appointed a suc- 
cessor to this veteran of diplomacy ; and that, not on 
account of any conflict of opinion between the Queen's 
Government and her Ambassador, but rather as a 
spontaneous act of generous deference to the suscep- 
tibilities of a power which had just received so severe 
a lesson. 

We will not terminate this part of our work 
without recalling to mind, that the project of Lord 
Stratford's predilection was the gradual transform- 
ation of the capitulations, which still regulate 
the mode of life of European Christians in the 
Levant, and to substitute for them an ampler word- 
ing, more compatible with the national dignity, 
without taking away from them any of the safe- 
guards necessary to the security of good and honest 
men. His Lordship knew, that the robberies and 
assassinations almost daily committed in Constan- 
tinople and at Smyrna had for their authors Christ- 



86 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

ians, most of whom were subjected to his jurisdic- 
tion, Maltese, Ionians, &c. ; but be understood very 
well, that the capitulations themselves are not only a 
brevet of impunity for incorrigible malefactors, but 
also that they give to the Mussulman inhabitants of 
the country a very sorry opinion of the impartiality 
and of the retributive justice of the Christian powers. 
Moreover, this Ambassador attempted on several 
occasions to come to an understanding with his 
colleagues, in order to bring about a provisional 
revision of the clauses, until such time as the modi- 
fied measures might become official and have the 
force of law. But he never succeeded. His efforts 
were constantly shattered against the Muscovite non 
possumus, or the absence of special instructions on 
the part of the other representatives. Thanks to 
this regrettable policy, the Mussulman population 
continues to enjoy the edifying spectacle afforded to 
them by thieves and assassins walking about free as 
air, from Buyukdereh to Pera ; their pockets filled 
with plunder, and a bloody dagger in their belt ; and 
in broad day pursuing, even into the coffee-houses, 
the victims of their audacity! If a rayah robs a 
European of a single para, there are not guards 
enough to lay hands upon him, or law enough to 
punish him : the rope or a drowning in the Bos- 
phorus seem to be the only punishments capable 



EUROPEAN LICENSE UNDER THE CAPITULATIONS. 87 

of satisfying the injured party. Two steps further 
on a tchapkun (vagabond), a European or protected 
Christian, murders in a coffee-house, robs, or aban- 
dons his victim without plundering him, as the case 
may be, goes out, and returns home as quietly as 
would a priest going to say mass. And if the local 
police interferes, purely and simply for the sake of 
order, and arrests for the honour of the foreign flag 
this scum of the Christian community, there is a 
general uproar, an appeal to the capitulations and 
the reserved rights ! as if there were any for these 
outcasts of humanity ! The goings and comings of 
the dragomans of the Embassies only cease when these 
unhappy victims of Mussulman oppression can freely 
give themselves up to the pleasures of the pro- 
menade, and enjoy without obstacle the song of the 
nightingales which charm the shores of the Bos- 
phorus. These examples of our spirit of equity do 
not belong to ancient history ; they are given every 
day at Cairo, at Alexandria, at Smyrna, as well as 
at the capital — everywhere, in short, where the 
Christian element is sufficiently numerous to cause 
such anomalies to be accepted. 

We will take a fresh proof from civil life. The 
Porte has liberally and wisely granted to Europeans 
the right of acquiring real property throughout the 
Empire, under the very reasonable condition for the 



88 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

proprietors of submitting themselves to the edicts 
which regulate the taxes, as well as to the municipal 
obligations which are derived from them. Up to 
this time, however, the law has been eluded. Houses 
and land have become the property of Europeans, 
without these having ever contributed anything 
towards the State taxes, either for keeping up the 
streets, the roads, the watercourses, or for the main- 
tenance of the local police. The Porte urges its 
claims : capitulations freely granted are brought up 
against it, and as the Government has its hands 
overloaded with more important affairs, this ques- 
tion has gone to join a number of others, more 
or less similar, the solution of which is post- 
poned, through diplomatic apathy, until the Greek 
Kalends.* 

"We think that we have amply proved that 
Christendom, taken individually or as a whole, 

* England, more than any other European power, seems to be 
precluded from asking for its subjects the right to hold land in 
Turkey, since English law does not allow foreigners to hold real 
property in England — very naturally, since the landholder in 
England enjoys various civil and political rights. Under the 
capitulations, the acquisition of real property by foreigners in 
Turkey is far more detrimental to Turkey than an infraction of 
the English law could be in England. 

Vattel, liv. ii. chap. vii. sect. 114. — " Tout etat est le maitre 
d'accorder ou de refuser aux etrangers la faculte de posseder des 
terres ou d'autres biens immeubles dans son territoire. S'il laleur 
accorde, ces biens etrangers demeurent soumis a la jurisdiction et 



BAD EFFECTS OF THE CAPITULATIONS. 89 

whether belonging to the commercial or to the poli- 
tical world, has not exactly preached the morality 
of modern civilisation by its example to the Mussul- 
mans. It has, on the contrary, according to our 
view, done everything to destroy the respect and 
esteem for that which power, right, and a certain 
prestige, had gained for it in more ancient times. 

But this is not all. We have just unveiled one 
of the bad sides of the treaties, that one which 
keeps up bitter feelings in the minds of the Mussul- 
mans ; we have passed in review the vices of 
Christendom, a hundred times worse than those of 
Islamism. We have rapidly portrayed the ways and 
usages of the mercantile class — of that class which 
devotes itself to that industry, of such multifarious 
branches, which Napoleon wittily called " organised 
brigandage." We will now pass on to another 
category of that European society, whose excep- 

aux lois du pays, sujets aux taxes comme les autres. L'empire du 
souverain s'etend dans tout le territoire, et il serait absurde d'en 
excepter quelques parties par la raison qu'elles sont possedees par 
des etrangers. Si le souverain ne permet point aux etrangers de 
posseder des immeubles, personne n'est en droit de s'en plaindre ; 
car il peut avoir de tres-bonnes raisons d'en user ainsi ; et les 
etrangers ne pouvant s'attribuer aucun droit dans son territoire, 
ils ne doivent pas nieme trouver mauvais qu'il use de son pouvoir 
et de ses droits de la maniere qu'il croit la plus salutaire a l'etat. 
Et puisque le souverain peut refuser aux etrangers la faculte 
de posseder des iinmeubles, il est le maitre sans doute de ne 
l'accorder qu'a certaines conditions." — Translator. 



90 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

tional functions put them so much the more in view, 
since they belong to a higher class. 

The Consular body, so honourable everywhere 
else, in general falls more than behind-hand with 
what is expected in the ports of the Levant. No- 
body doubts the good intentions of the Governments 
represented at Constantinople, nor their desire to 
have honest Consuls, protecting and punishing, ad- 
ministering and acting, with as much dignity as 
disinterestedness, according to law and justice. 
With regard to this there is but one voice and one 
opinion. How, then, does it come to pass that some 
of these subaltern agents, for the most part depend- 
ing upon the Ambassadors at Constantinople, allow 
themselves reprehensible actions, which are censured 
strongly by the public, without bringing down 
upon themselves the chastisement which official con- 
trol, careful of the commonest decency, could not 
fail to inflict upon them ?* It would be well, how- 



* It is difficult to find any answer to this question ; but this 
indifference, however culpable, will be understood better from the 
fact, that in addition to the numerous Consuls who have unfitted 
themselves for their posts, one could be named who continues to 
be employed after the Government was aware that it had been 
defrauded by him. If Her Majesty's Government could pass' this 
over, what misconduct would not meet with impunity ? An opinion 
may be formed from this example with respect to other European 
Governments and Consuls in Turkey. — Translator. 



CHARACTER OF EUROPEAN CONSULS. 91 

ever, for once to show the Mussulmans that Christian 
justice and protection are not matters of traffic. 

"We will be very brief upon the subject of Consul- 
generals, Consuls, and subaltern agents occupied in 
trade. The inconvenience of that incompatibility is 
glaring : a man may naturally be drawn on to take, 
without intending it, the law into his own hands, 
to employ his influence and immunities here and 
there for his own benefit. From the affairs which 
these functionaries do not always deal with in con- 
formity to the strict usage of the country, there 
arise from time to time conflicts between the Govern- 
ment and the consular agent, in a matter in which 
the latter is both judge and pleader. It is especially 
in the lower part of the corps, the consular agents 
and sub-agents in the interior, that the evil shows 
itself in all its force. At Damietta, for instance, 
there is a Levantine bent down under the 
weight of consular dignities ; he represents at third 
hand fifteen or sixteen nations. The public offices 
are continually besieged by the claims of this hun- 
dred-headed diplomat, who, in addition to his in- 
numerable functions, finds time to be one of the 
well-to-do merchants of the place. 

We will examine more particularly the subject 
of protections extended to Christian and Jewish 
rayahs, sometimes bestowed gratuitously, but for the 



92 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

most part sold for ready money.* Properly speak- 
ing, there is no tariff established for the regulation 
of these equivocal transactions ; an arrangement is 
made as to presents, and the sums thus paid are far 
from being inconsiderable. In time they make up 
very handsome fortunes for the unscrupulous prac- 
tises of this consular trade, which transforms into 
Christian subjects individuals wearing turbans, long 
robes, and possessing only their own mother-tongue, 
Turkish or Arabic, in which to congratulate their 
adopted Sovereign when on his travels. Such a 
medley of subjects of different nationalities can 
hardly be imagined : a human mosaic which is not 
without originality, in Egypt for instance, when it 
presents itself to the inspection of some prince eager 
for new impressions, when he is received at an 
audience by the Viceroy during his tour in the 
Levant, and he finds himself surrounded by a crowd 
of his countrymen in turbans, riding on donkeys 
like true sons of Egypt or of Israel, which they 
are. 



* A Levantine, a British Vice- Consul at Mytilene, used to take 
his consular seal with him after dinner, and manufacture Ionian 
subjects at the cafe : these were disfranchised by the polished 
and learned scholar who held the consulship at a later period. 
It is a pity that this gentleman is not sent on a tour of revision 
through the consulates of the Levant, combining antiquarian 
research with the purging of those Augean stables. — Translator. 



ABUSIVE PROTECTION OF OTTOMAN SUBJECTS. 93 

It is known that the firmans of the capitulations 
grant to the foreign representatives the right of 
extending the immunities of the national privileges 
to all the rayahs employed in their oflicial and 
private residence, which, in virtue of the principle 
of ex-territoriality, is considered as a part of the 
country accredited. The number of these persons 
employed is laid down in the treaties, and if it is 
exceeded in moderation, the local government can 
shut its eyes upon an irregularity which has no 
further inconvenience. But when, under any pre- 
text, a Consul arbitrarily extends his protection to 
the inhabitants, on whatever grounds it may be, 
beyond the prescribed limits, in order to withdraw 
these individuals from the action of their natural 
authorities, when this international offence is accom- 
panied by the very aggravating circumstance of 
remuneration, which converts it into a traffic, then 
the scandal has reached its summit, and to allow it 
to endure is a weakness, a crime which it is necessary 
to punish.* 



* In Siam, a foreign Consul had a number of abusive subjects ; 
in addition to this he sold spirit-licenses at a low rate : in doing 
this he not only undersold the Siamese Government, but did much 
harm by increasing the number of spirit-shops, which it was the 
object of the high price required by the Siamese Government for 
a license to check. — Translator. 



94 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

The Russian consular agents devote themselves 
much to the industry of protection. Cairo and Alex- 
andria abounded, before the Italian war, in artificial 
subjects of the King of Naples and the Grand Duke 
of Tuscany. Prussia seems to have in the Levant a 
rather large number of subjects, of Turkish, Arabic, 
and Armenian speech. The flags which respect them- 
selves the most are those of France and Spain. The 
others are not particularly notorious in this respect. 
These deplorable proceedings showed themselves in 
all their cynicism during the Crimean war ; when 
Abbas Pasha, upon orders received from Constanti- 
nople, had to send away all the Hellenic subjects 
from the Egyptian territory. To the great surprise 
of the Yiceroy, a great number of these, as if by en- 
chantment, were found to be European protected 
subjects, and claimed what they called their political 
rights ; and conflicts of authority ensued, which, for- 
tunately, were not serious. 

Temporary protections gratuitously given may 
have been justifiable in a period of great calamities, 
and at a time when religious animosities existed in 
all their force. But at the present time there is no 
longer any reason for their existence, cruelties and 
exactions by the Porte having long since happily 
been left behind, amongst the things of the past. 
The motive of the abuses which we denounce does 



ABUSIVE PROTECTION OF OTTOMAN SUBJECTS. 95 

not consist therefore, in consular philanthropy, stimu- 
lated by the active solicitude of Christendom. It 
must be sought for elsewhere. It will be found in 
the decided taste of the non-Mussulman rayahs for 
shaking off any yoke placed over their equivocal 
proceedings ; in the extraordinary seduction offered 
by operations made with the Government, and which, 
when it discovered the numberless frauds of which it 
was the victim, it would probably refuse to sanction, 
or to bring to the desired conclusion, if the parties 
who were to profit depended on its authority. In 
this case it would be necessary to submit to disagree- 
able investigations, the least consequence of which 
would be to reduce, if not to absorb the profits ; besides, 
highly situated associates might be compromised, 
which would evidently spoil the trade. But when 
the party enjoys a European protection, no matter 
which, things take another aspect. Is there any 
hitch with the Custom-house, or with any office, 
there is a rush to the Consulate, which sends still 
faster a kavass or a dragoman, as the case may be, 
with the Consul's compliments, and the difference is 
arranged ... at the expense of somebody, of course. 
If the affair is important, the Consul gets into his 
carriage, carries his compliments himself, writes, 
protests, threatens, goes into a flurry, and conquers 
by utter exhaustion . . . casus belli are always heavy 



96 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

clouds, of which people are glad to clear their 
horizon. 

Let us mention another anomaly, not less glaring, 
created by the capitulations, and kept up by the 
various interests which it protects by implication, 
and one quite as fruitful in shocking abuses as the 
preceding ones. We mean the administration of 
justice in its different branches, with regard to the 
European community. 

About seventeen powers are represented at Con- 
stantinople by seventeen ministers, who themselves 
are more or less represented by as many consuls- 
general, consuls, vice-consuls, and infinitesimal 
agents, posted from Trebizond to Smyrna, from 
Beyrout to Alexandria, from Cairo to Jiddah, from 
Suez to Damietta and Eosetta, &c. &c. If railways 
and electric telegraphs, those extended roots of the 
great tree of modern civilisation, have in some 
measure lowered the selfish barriers which formerly 
hindered the mutual relations between the states of 
Europe, human reason does not seem to have kept 
pace with locomotives and electric wires. Each 
state has carefully preserved its abuses, its usages, 
its language, and its laws ; and the tower of Babel, 
instead of having fallen into ruin, still dominates 
over the East in its whole extent. Seventeen con- 
sulates, seventeen different jurisdictions, legislations, 



CONSULAR JUSTICE. 97 

and administrations of justice ! And what jus- 
tice ! * It is easy to understand that it is rather 
lame, whatever might be the good intentions of the 
judges. 

What is the result of this official chaos ? Let us 
examine briefly this difficult question. In the first 
place, in virtue of the principle of ex-territoriality, 
established by the capitulations, each Embassy, and 
so each Consulate, representing a portion of the 
country accredited, becomes in reality the legal do- 
micile of the subjects whom it protects. Conse- 
'quently, every plaintiff in any cause is obliged to 
accept the jurisdiction of the defendant. Now, an 
Englishman and a Russian, dwelling in the same 
port in the Levant, but at variance about a commer- 
cial difference, proceed to the settlement of it exactly 
as if one lived in Cumberland and the other at 
Tobolsk. In the second place, the consular courts, 
upon whose benches, for want of better, occasionally 
illiterate judges are called to sit, only pronounce 

* A case of barratry occurred at Constantinople : three Perotes 
insured a ship at London, Marseilles, and Trieste, and instructed 
the captain to lose it: he sent them word that he had done so, 
but thought it more advantageous to sell the ship on the Barbary 
coast, so that the fraud was discovered, and the insurances, though 
claimed, were not lost to the insurance companies. But owing to 
the confusion of jurisdiction, the Perotes belonging to different 
nationalities, and being influential persons, no steps were taken 
against them. — Translator. 

H 



98 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

upon the first hearing, and appeals go to Constanti- 
nople, to be unravelled in the presence of the lega- 
tions of the respective parties. In this last respect 
France alone is an exception to the rule. This 
power, whose excellent traditions in matter of juris- 
prudence are the honour of her magistracy, has from 
the first attributed to the Imperial Court of Aix the 
right of hearing and deciding all causes coming 
under this head, arising in the Levant. However 
this may be, it will be easy to understand how many 
reefs are set in the passages leading to a justice so 
costly, and so tedious and difiicult to obtain; how' 
much change of place it requires ; and, in case the 
matter is entrusted to agents at Constantinople, by 
how slight a thread depends the gaining of an im- 
portant suit ! 

In considering this active and heterogeneous com- 
munity, whose ojDerations are as extended as they are 
varied, and the interests so closely bound up with 
the financial state of Europe, the dangers of this con- 
stitutional vice will be at once perceived ; and a just 
idea will be formed of the innumerable difficulties, 
the conflicts of jurisdiction, the means of avoiding a 
process, the dubious manoeuvres, the quibbles, the 
denials of justice, which such a state of things neces- 
sarily carries in its train. 

It has happened, in cases of bankruptcy, that 



CONSULAR JUSTICE. 99 

paid clerks, or relations of one of the chief creditors, 
himself a connexion of the bankrupt, have been 
named by the Consulate as liquidators or commis- 
sioners for the bankrupt's estate ! The water of 
the stream went naturally to the river, leaving 
nothing wherewith to quench the thirst of the other 
claimants.* 

By the side of what may be called this chronic 
anarchy there prospers a self- constituted bar, whose 
intelligent sagacity, more than University degrees, 
succeeds pretty well in making the best of the classic 
oyster. As the greater part of the causes brought 
before the consular courts belong to commercial 
matters, and these amateur lawyers almost all issue 
from the ranks of the mercantile community, their 
labour is very easy. It is all reduced for them to a 
knowledge of local customs, and to a suitable portion 
of common sense, in which they are not wanting. 
Moreover, a too-learned show of science sends the 
judges to sleep nearly everywhere ; and would in- 
fallibly become a calamity in a country where the 

* One of the chief vices of the consular jurisdiction is that 
impartiality on the part of the Consul, or of the assessors whom 
he sometimes nominates, in these small communities is almost 
impossible. Yet a recent correspondence in the newspapers con- 
gratulates the British residents at Smyrna on the fact of the 
newly-appointed British Consul being related by marriage to one 
of the chief Smyrna houses ! — Translator. 



100 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

mind and the body are kindly disposed to the 
siesta. 

In criminal matters the consequences are still 
worse, if possible. The culprit usually passes be- 
tween the thousand flaws in the formalities. As the 
consular jurisdiction only extends to civil, commer- 
cial, and police matters, the consular clerks in these 
cases confine themselves to preparing the case against 
the defendant ; and both are sent to Europe, to the 
judges whom they concern. Nine times out of ten 
these dismiss the defendant, or the prisoner, either 
from a want of clearness in the accusation, or rather 
by reason of the nullities with which it abounds, or 
because the most necessary formalities have not been 
observed at the outset. A number of assassins, 
forgers, coiners, &c, escape thus from the action of 
the law, and are let loose upon the continent after a 
short detention.* 

"No doubt it is better to acquit a hundred guilty 
persons than to condemn one innocent one. We do 
not dispute the advantages of this excellent maxim ; 
but it cannot be sufficient to perpetuate a system 



* In June or July, 1864, two men were sent prisoners to Liver- 
pool by one of Her Majesty's Consuls; as no indictment had 
arrived with them, from an accident of the Post-office or other 
cause, they had to he set at liberty, and probably departed to 
America. — Translator. 



WESTERN INDUSTRY HAS DONE LITTLE. 101 

which, by no means adds to the esteem which Euro- 
pean Christendom ought to enjoy in the Levant. 

* * * * * 

Up to this time, "Western industry has done hardly 
anything in the Levant worth mentioning. Here 
and there, as has been the case in Egypt, some 
enterprise has been got up, with the secret object 
of realising a large profit by making it over to the 
Government, and has not succeeded in bearing the 
fruit which the country had a right to expect from 
it. On the one side, the Ottoman Government has 
rather looked with an eye of suspicion upon the 
attempts of this kind made on different occasions by 
honourable European companies.* On the other, 
the Christian colony whose aspirations are directed 
towards the chances of large profits has little 
sympathy, or perhaps aptitude, for the industry 
which gains the pence of which are composed the 
shillings, which in time form the pounds. It re- 
quires other baits to draw its attention, and to lead 
it to employ its time and money in a branch ot 
commerce which develops the riches of the country. 

l/m %F yfc Tp 7$ 

At Paris, in the unwholesome regions of a certain 

* This has been caused by fiascos, such as the recent one of the 
Smyrna and Aidin Eailway Company. — Translator. 



102 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

titled and ruined woman of bad reputation, it was 
usual to project " campaigns " in Egypt, to raise 
the wind when fortune was at a low ebb by means 
of a razzia upon the Viceroy. These people used 
mutually to form wishes for each other to obtain 
commissions for furniture, for mirrors, for any kind 
of article, with millions of profit as the result, and 
perhaps also, by luck, a red ribbon .... for haying 
encouraged commerce and art ! The moral standard 
had fallen so low that gentlemen, bearers of fine 
names, used to arrive at Alexandria, provided, 
generally, ' with semi-official letters ; they used to 
get introduced to His Highness by their represent- 
ative, who solicited for those who were recom- 
mended to him a little drop of milk from that good 
cow, so much more adored than ever was the ancient 
Apis. The Yiceroy, who did not know how to re- 
fuse, used to grant the favour sued for with con- 
tempt upon his lips. Could he act differently? 
The habit had been fallen into, and his Christian 
officials who were most intimate with him, those 
who seemed most devoted to him, pressed and 
worried him without ceasing, so as to win their 
share of the prey. The fortunate traveller used 
then to quit the palace, commissioned to supply 
thousands of tons of coal, of coke, cloth, or shoes 
for the army. Adroit associates under-bought the 



SPOLIATION OF EGYPT BY THREATS OF LAWSUITS. 103 

commissions for a large discount, and the Boulevard 
des Italiens in a short time was full of the success of 
the expedition. 

# # # * * 

The perpetual cry of a few greedy, and probably 
ill-paid Consuls, was invariably this: — "Highness, 
a little affair for my subject, for my protege, if you 
please !" And orders for carriages, for rails, cannon, 
coal, floating batteries, &c. &c, fell thick as hail into 
the laced hats, which, like intelligent workshops, 
distilled the profits and brought them by hidden 
channels into the interested pockets. 

One or two of these functionaries, for instance, 
arranged in such a manner as always to have a 
handful of equivocal lawsuits in their pockets, of 
which they let a corner peep out. With these from 
time to time they threatened the Pasha, with polite 
circumlocutions ; he, wearied and worried by these 
continual assaults, sometimes made an end of it, 
addressing them in this wise: — "Gentlemen, you 
know better than I do that these manoeuvres are 
most unworthy, and that your clients make us do 
a dirty business ; but as it is repugnant to me to 
fight with cut-throats, here, take 100, 200, or 300,000 
francs ; make what arrangements you like, and leave 
me at peace." 

To this painful sketch let us add one of the 



104 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

most precious objects of the rich collection. It is 
said, that amongst the hyperbolical claims which ap- 
peared after the death of Said Pasha, there was a 
bill presented of 550,000 francs for "fresh fruit " 
supplied to His Highness, and behind which was 
naturally to be found the consular Deus ex machina. 
What imagination ! and what an excessively relaxing 
diet! 

"We will end these very incomplete notes with an 
account of a regrettable occurrence, which happened 
a few days after the accession of the reigning Yiceroy, 
and concerning which the French papers at the time 
made some noise. Impartial readers will see on 
which side lay the first fault, and they will com- 
pare the sensitive zeal which some Consuls always 
bring to the service of insulted national honour, with 
the servile fuss which they sometimes employ to 
satisfy the scandalous appetites of their subordinates. 

A Frenchman, belonging to the Suez Canal, was 
passing on horseback through one of the most popu- 
lous quarters of the Turkish part of Alexandria ; 
there was a crowd in the bazar, and soldiers were 
hurrying through in great numbers so as to fill up 
the road, which was covered with mud and puddles. 
The rider, finding himself delayed in his progress, 
and being, no doubt, in a hurry to arrive, attempted 
to force his way, by hastening the pace of his horse, 



ARROGANT CONDUCT OF A FRENCH CONSUL. 105 

which, caused a confusion among the passers-by, 
some of whom complained of having been hustled 
and splashed. Hands were lifted to the horse's 
head and stopped it short. This proceeding seems 
to have exasperated the rider, who apostrophised the 
soldiers, and mixed with the epithets which he be- 
stowed upon them the word Khanzir (pig), the grossest 
insult which a Christian can throw in the face of a 
Mussulman. The rest may be guessed. The crowd, 
excited by the death of the Pasha and the accession 
of his successor, was anything but disposed to be 
indulgent. The rider was, very unfortunately, un- 
horsed and ill-treated, and laid a complaint before 
the Consul-general. This functionary, forgetting, 
no doubt, that the new Yiceroy was a member of the 
family of Mehemet Ali, of the man who had always 
shown himself just and equitable towards the Christ- 
ians, who had made the greatest number of spon- 
taneous concessions to their usages, an example 
nobly followed by his successors, — this functionary, 
in short, acts towards H. H. Ismail Pasha as sum- 
marily, not to say more, as if he had had to deal 
with the commander of a body of Tae-pings in 
China. He imperiously exacted an " immediate " 
reparation, without admitting the slightest previous 
inquiry, and setting aside the action of the tribunals 
of the country. He put the knife to the Yiceroy' s 



106 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

throat, and inflicted a humiliation upon him which. 
Christians and Mussulmans felt perfectly, especially 
as His Highness had never refused to give satis- 
faction. 

Is it thus that the matter would have been 
treated elsewhere — in France, at Paris, for instance, 
where the municipal police, less scrupulous as to 
formalities than is generally believed, " seizes " bru- 
tally, under the slightest pretext, passengers who 
walk or ride, and whose demeanour, more than 
pacific, contrasts with the Gallic excitableness 
abroad ?* Why obtain redress by such means, and so 
cast a slur upon the justice of a Government which 
not only has always granted it, but which has con- 
stantly gone to meet the most minute exigencies : 
whilst, on the other hand, it is honoured so far as to 
pocket its money, and to lie down at its feet to beg 
its favours ? Why offer it so deadly an affront in 
the sight of the country, and trample under foot an 
old friendship and honourable antecedents, full of a 
hospitality which is nowhere else to be met with as 
ample or as generous ? It must be confessed, the 
flag of Christendom, formerly so pure and resplen- 
dent in the Levant, is now dragged down by a 

* After the "Italian plot" of the spring of 1864, the police 
took up several persons in the Bois de Boulogne, merely because 
their personal appearance was suspicious. — Translator. 



UNJUSTIFIABLE CLAIMS ON EGYPTIAN TREASURY. 107 

weight of indignity and baseness which the floods of 
noble blood shed in the Crusades will neyer wash 
away. 

In Egypt, when the wind blows from the quarter 
of law- suits, that Khamsin of the Viceroys, the storm 
carries all before it. Nothing protects the treasury 
from it, whose coffers seem like fragile card-houses. 
For ten justifiable suits, there are forty which are 
lame and fifty dishonest. They are brought on upon 
all and every occasion. They are the subject of 
dreams, and are planned beforehand, whilst soliciting 
the Yiceroy for concessions, whose terms, framed 
with cunning ambiguity, place the Government at a 
later date under the alternative of buying back, at 
the cost of millions, the unlucky favour, or of con- 
fiding the claims arising out of it to the honour of 
arbitrators, who have much talent but not always 
enough of conscience ; who sometimes take with 
both hands, and infallibly condemn the richest of 
the pleaders. There have been exceptions to this 
rule, but they have been very rare. Said Pasha has 
left behind him a few thorns of this kind, the extrac- 
tion of which will be no easy matter, especially if 
the established system continues to be the same. 
The treasury has only to take good care of itself, the 
guests are numerous, and their appetites sharpened. 



108 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

In fact, nothing is easier than the attack, and no- 
thing more problematical than the defence. There 
is always a sufficiently large number of Consuls- 
general, real rifled artillery, ready to back the suits 
which their subjects bring against the Yiceroy. The 
lawyers begin the siege ; by the aid of intrigues and 
Latin quotations the affair soon becomes so confused 
that the Government, no longer comprehending it, 
may be effectually frightened. Then menaces inter- 
vene, and, if need be, arbitrators — commissioners 
pro forma ; and the curtain falls upon the " execu- 
tion " of the Treasury, the victim designated before- 
hand, and always sacrificed.* 

It is evident, a hundred times evident, that a 
state of things so monstrously unjust, so abominably 
immoral and tyrannical, cannot be prolonged any 
length of time. The honour and the interests of 
Egypt require a change, both radical and prompt. 
Let the Yiceroy adopt for all that concerns his go- 
vernment, with the reservations and the modifica- 
tions required by the civil and religious condition of 
the country, the code of a progressive and intelli- 

* This has heen borne out by the large indemnity obtained by 
the Suez Canal Company for yielding up the concessions of land 
made by the late Said Pasha in opposition to the fundamental laws 
of the empire. — Translator. 



RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF EGYPTIAN JURISDICTION. 109 

gent European power — that of Belgium, for instance. 
And if there are but ten just men in Egypt, it will 
be more than are wanted to decide upon the merits 
of the actions brought against the Government. In 
the contrary case, it would not be difficult for the 
Yiceroy to come to an understanding with the 
Ministry of His Majesty Xing Leopold upon the 
subject of an official or private arrangement, autho- 
rising a High Belgian Court to lend him the assist- 
ance of its lights and services. This measure, or 
such another having the same result, would arrest, 
as if by enchantment, the torrential flow of law- 
suits. Dishonest suits would die of a natural death, 
leaving honest and really well-founded causes to 
their ordinary course. 

Then the function of the Consuls would again 
become what it should never have ceased to be. 
These officials would represent their Government 
with regard to their veritable subjects, within the 
limits of justice and equity, without overstepping 
those of a well-defined jurisdiction. They would 
no longer support the claims of their subjects for 
the sake of a shameful per-centage, and by methods 
which the laws of the country which has accredited 
them would never sanction. They would no longer 
become the " commission agents" of operations 
more or less above-board, for the sake of a present, 



110 MODERN CHRISTENDOM IN THE LEVANT. 

or a portion of the illicit profits. In this manner 
they would recover the sentiment of their own 
dignity, and by degrees would shake off that humi- 
liating dust with which their cloth has been covered 
by culpable complaisance and an unavowable thirst 
for gain. 

The European Governments, on their side, would 
make better appointments, and would give better pay 
to their agents in Egypt, where living is expensive, 
where temptations are numerous, and where luxury 
is carried to an excess which surpasses all notions 
of what is absurd. 

Lastly, the local Government would cease to see, 
in certain members of this body, either adversaries 
or friends, according to the scale of favours which it 
granted or suffered to be extorted from it. It would 
respect those who know how to cause themselves to 
be respected ; and if a good hint or good advice 
came from Europe, it would be received without sus- 
picion — with gratitude even, from an intermediary 
who no longer sells his services, nor begs for favours 
for rapacious and dishonest solicitors. 



Ill 



III. 



THE EFFECTS OF CONTEMPT FOE, INTERNATIONAL 
LAW. 

" Justitia non nostra constitutio, sed divina lex, et vinculum 
societatis humanse. In hac non est quod aestiraemus quid expediat, 
expedit tibi quicquid ilia dictaverit. Quisquis ergo hanc sectari 
clesicleras, Deum time prius et ama, ut ameris a Deo. Amabilis 
eris Deo, si in hoc ilium imitaberis, ut velis omnibus prodesse et 
nulli nocere." — Seneca. 

In the middle ages the name of Religion served 
as the plea and justification of aggression upon 
weaker nations ; it led to their spoliation and en- 
slavement. The Pope, then the head of all Christen- 
dom, partitioned Asia and America amongst the 
Christian Princes. Spain took the lead in these 
expeditions, so contrary to all the principles of 
justice and international law ; and members of 
the Spanish Government were also the first to 
protest against the acts of tyranny and injustice 
into which the Colonists were led by natural steps, 



112 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

deriving from their unlawful invasion of unoffending 
countries.* 

The nineteenth century, which professes to have 
discarded fanaticism, has substituted the advance 
of civilisation for the extension of Christianity as 
its pass-word. Humanity has not gained by the 
change ; aggressions continue as before, in defiance 
of international law : the motive in the present 
time is more undisguisedly selfish, since modern 
aggressions are made under the pretext of commerce, 
by which the aggressors hope to enrich themselves : 
the absence of a religious element, however mistaken 
it may have been, makes itself felt, since there is 
now no one to plead for the vanquished. The ex- 
ception to this in modern times is in New Zealand, 
where deserving members of the Church of England 
have interested themselves in the fate of the ~New 
Zealanders, and have not ceased to protest against 
the spoliation and extermination going on in that 
unhappy land. 

* "In 1542 the Bishop Las Casas presented a memorial to 
Charles V., remonstrating against enslaving the Peruvians. He 
maintained that if the Indians, as it was pretended, would not 
labour unless compelled, the white man would still find it for his 
interest to cultivate the soil ; and that if he should not be able 
to do so, that circumstance would give him no right over the 
Indian, since God does not allow evil that good may come of it. This 
lofty morality, it will be remembered, was from the lips of a 
Dominican in the sixteenth century." — Prescott's " Conquest of 
Peru," book iv. chap. vh. 



AGGRESSIONS ON JAPAN. 113 

Japan has been subjected to the two forms under 
which European aggression has presented itself, in 
the sixteenth century and in our days. Let com- 
parison be made between these two periods of inter- 
course with Japan. In the sixteenth century, the 
Europeans made numerous proselytes, and gained a 
great influence over the councils of that state ; their 
abuse of that influence led to their expulsion. In 
the nineteenth century, the Europeans have no sooner 
arrived than they excite universal hostility on the 
part of the Japanese, and the desire to be rid of the 
unwelcome intruders. Yet it is said, with much 
show of reason, that Japan has remained compara- 
tively stationary since the first visit of Europeans, 
whilst Europe has greatly advanced. But such su- 
perior civilisation should more readily obtain admi- 
ration and a favourable reception, than that of the 
sixteenth century. Why is it not so ? Perhaps the 
improvement of the nineteenth century is only ma- 
terial, and there is a falling off in the respect felt for 
legality and the rights of others. Certainly, among 
the British visitors to Japan in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, there have not been many persons so respectable 
as Mr. ~W. Adams, the English pilot, or master, in 
the beginning of the sixteenth century.* 

* " The lowly -born William Adams, when cast in wretchedness 
on the shores of Japan, was not indeed received as a prince ; yet this 



114 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

But the people of the present time cannot justify 
themselves by what took place in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, with respect to their conduct towards other 
nations ; for since then the duties of nations towards 
their neighbour have been codified, and form inter- 
national law, which has become fixed ; but is not on 
that account more regarded : and as these laws are 
the expression of justice and order, the disregard of 
them is the cause of many of the evils from which 
we suffer. 

In the sixteenth century Europe was a prey to 
wars of religion, which had been made the pretext 
for wars of aggrandisement and rapine. This state 
of disorder caused Suarez, and after him Grotius, 
Yattel, and others, to write those works which have 
become international law. These writings did not 
become law from any authority of the authors, neither 
were they subsequently formally accepted as such : 
but their weight and authority consist in this, that 
their authors sought out and laid down the first 
principles of right and justice, which stand and re- 
man, commencing life in the capacity of " apprentice to Master 
Nicolas Diggines, of Limehouse," eventually attained rank and ac- 
quired possession in the Empire equal to those of a prince. With 
no claims to consideration hut talent and good conduct, he hecame 
the esteemed councillor of the sagacious and powerful monarch 
hy whom the land that had afforded him shelter was ruled." — 
Rundall's " Memorials of Japan ," Preface, p. iv. 



PRETENCE OF CIVILISATION. 115 

commend themselves by their truth alone ; they then 
examined what had been done by men in inter- 
national transactions, from the earliest times on re- 
cord, though they did not accept or approve every- 
thing that had been done as a precedent, but adopted 
as precedents and examples, to be followed only by 
such acts or modes of transacting international busi- 
ness as agreed with the eternal principles of truth 
and justice, which they took as the point of departure 
for ascertaining what international law was, or 
should be : they also related various wrongful trans- 
actions, as examples to be avoided. 

In the nineteenth century " Civilisation " has 
taken the place of "Religion" as a watchword, and 
as a pretext for aggression. The modern term, like 
the former one of difference of religion, is used to 
proscribe those who differ from the persons who utter 
it, and to deprive them of those rights which all 
men possess in common, and to get rid of those obli- 
gations which all members of the family of mankind 
owe to one another. The modern term is more vague, 
more elastic, more unjust; and it serves to deprive 
the Chinese of the rights of international law and 
its mutual obligations, equally with the Feejee Is- 
landers, or other cannibals.* The application of the 

* The following passage from a controversy between Las Casas, 
bishop of Chiapa, and Dr. Gines de Sepulveda, chronicler of the 



116 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

word " Civilisation" is very much like that of " Or- 
thodoxy ;" it claims pre-eminence for the speaker 
who uses it. The possession of civilisation cannot 
alter right or wrong, remove obligations, or lessen 
the necessity of observing good faith with the un- 
civilised, any more than a difference of religion can 
do any of these things. Yet people now-a-days 
reason, and certainly governments act, as if this were 
the case. On the contrary, the claim to a higher 
civilisation, so far from freeing those who make it 
from their obligations to those whom they term un- 
civilised, imposes upon them the duty and the neces- 



Emperor, at Valladolid, in 1550, lays down the obligations of 
civilised nations towards cannibals, and those whom they consider 
as such. The former says : — 

" The fourth argument of Dr. Sepulveda is founded on the 
injury which the Indians inflict upon the innocent; killing them 
to sacrifice or eat them. To which the Rev. Bishop, although 
in the sixth case he had conceded that it was incumbent upon the 
Church to defend the innocent, answered that it was not, however, 
a convenient or suitable thing to defend them by wars. This he 
based upon three or four grounds. The first has already been 
touched upon, that of two evils we ought to choose the lesser ; 
and that the Indians should kill a few innocent people to eat them, 
which is even more revolting than sacrificing them, is without 
comparison a lesser evil than those which come of war, from the 
excesses of which many more innocent persons are killed than 
the number of innocent persons whom it is proposed to liberate. 
In addition to this, by these wars the faith is brought into ill 
repute and made odious to the unbelievers, which is even a still 
greater evil. The second argument was because we have a nega- 



LAS CASAS AGAINST WAR WITH CANNIBALS. 117 

sity of making good their claim, by superior respect 
to what is lawful, just, and true. 

Since civilisation confers no rights over the un- 
civilised, it is not strictly necessary to inquire what 
is civilisation, or by what it is tested. M. de Maistre 
limited it to those nations which study Latin. M. 
Escayrac de Lauture claims civilisation for all those 
countries which possess fire-arms and the printing- 
press. Mr. Cobden would assign the highest civilis- 
ation to the country possessing the greatest number 
of miles of electric telegraph and the largest quantity 
of daily newspapers. The Chinese might point to 



tive precept, ' Thou shalt not kill ;' and most particularly, 
' insontem et innocentem non occides,' (Exod. sxiii.), which is more 
rigid than the affirmative one to defend the innocent. And on 
this account, when it is not possible to accomplish this second 
precept without going against the first, the second ought rather 
to be broken than the first. And since in the fights of nations in 
a just war, where there are cities of the enemy, several innocent 
people may be killed accidentally, not knowing them, and without 
any such intention ; yet when war is undertaken to chastise some 
delinquents, if it is to be presumed that the innocent persons are 
in greater number, and that it is not possible to distinguish be- 
tween the two, it is a sounder counsel to omit to inflict such 
chastisement, conformably with the evangelical precept of Jesus 
Christ, who did not permit the plucking out of the tares from the 
wheat, lest instead the wheat should be plucked out at the same 
time, but He rather chose that it should be deferred till the harvest,, 
which is the day of judgment, when it will be possible without risk 
to discern the good and the bad, and to chastise these without 
prejudice to the others." 



118 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

respect for the law, and the most ancient annals ; 
and the Japanese might put forward absence of pau- 
perism as tests of civilisation, worth at least as much 
as the others : they could, at any rate, maintain that 
civilisations differ like religions, but that there is no 
foundation for the claim of Europeans to be the sole 
possessors of the former. 

The use of unmeaning terms has superseded the 
sense of law; and that superiority of civilisation 
should have been put forward as a justification for 
international acts, which would not have been to- 
lerated, or even attempted between European nations, 
shows how much the study of international law has 
been neglected of late, and how much its first prin- 
ciples have been set aside and contemned. The con- 
fusion arising from this contempt of international 
law, begun in Asia, is now spreading to Europe ; and 
the evil must increase, unless some great writer 
should arise, with power to recall and enforce upon 
the present generation the forgotten lessons and the 
high morality of Grotius, and the other writers who 
followed him. 

Meantime, it may be well to reiterate some of the 
principles laid down by those great men ; especially 
those, the neglect and transgression of which have 
led to disorders and wars, to the demoralisation of 
states, and, subsequently, of individuals. 



EQUALITY OF ALL NATIONS. 119 

One of the first principles of international law- 
is, that all nations are equal, without regard to their 
size or importance, or to the form of their govern- 
ment ; since the duties of nations towards each other 
are the same as those of individual men towards their 
fellow-men, and a dwarf is as much a man as a 
giant.* It follows from this, that nations are bound 
to assist in the preservation of other nations ; to assist 
them in cases of famine and calamity ; to contribute 
towards their improvement, but not by forcible 
means, or against their will ; to cultivate the friend- 
ship of other nations ; to take care of their honour ; 
and the differences of religion should not prevent 
one nation from rendering to another services of hu- 
manity, and no nation should do anything to injure 
another ; and the intercourse between nations should 
be mutually beneficial. Yet what is the practice, 
and, apart from positive aggressions, how is it that 
public morality in England has sanctioned the en- 
forced introduction of opium into China, in spite of 
the laws of the country, and whilst opium is an un- 
mitigated evil, a means of debauchery, admitting of 
no palliation ? 

It is equally well established, that no nation has 
the right to interfere in the internal affairs of 

* Vattel, " Preliminaries," book ii. chap. i. sect. 18. 



120 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

another.* Yet of late it has been assumed that two 
or three nations could, by joining together, acquire 
a right against a third which they did not possess 
separately. This practice has been protested against 
under the name of Non-intervention, and this has 
been made a principle and a virtue. But we do not 
talk of non-robbery or non-piracy, so that this term 
shows the demoralisation of opinion ; for it leads to 
the supposition that intervention or non-intervention 
are different policies, instead of the true notion that 
intervention is wrong and cannot, in any manner, be 
justified. Wheaton, after referring to the refusal of 
England to join in the measures of interference taken 
by the Congress of Verona, in 1822, seeks to justify 
the intervention of France, England, and Eussia, in 
1827, in the affairs of the Morea.f It was open to 
any of those countries to have sent an ultimatum and 
a declaration of war to the Ottoman Porte, but the 
conduct which led to Navarino, and warlike operations 
in the midst of peace, was a distinct violation of law, 
and a crime.} 

Partly owing to this setting aside of the principle 
of equality amongst nations, by fanciful divisions of 
civilised and uncivilised ; partly owing to interven- 

* Vattel, book ii. chap. i. sect. 7. 

f Wheaton, vol. i. part ii. chap. i. sect. 9. 

t The case of Mexico is so recent that it is enough to name it. 



NECESSITY OF A DECLARATION OF WAR. 121 

tions, by which hostile acts are committed against 
nations with whom those who intervene are not at 
war, great abuses, irregularities, and violations of 
the law have taken place in the manner of carrying 
on war. To make war lawful or just, it is necessary 
that one nation should have a cause of complaint 
against the other; it is necessary that a remedy 
should first be sought for the injury complained of, 
that, if redress is refused, an ultimatum, threatening 
war, should be sent to the state causing the injury ; 
and lastly, that war should be formally declared, and 
the causes of it proclaimed, by the sovereign of the 
state which complains of the injury. Such is the 
law of nations.* The law of England is the same ; 
and it requires that a declaration of war shall have 
been made by the sovereign, without which no acts 
of war are lawful, and they are in nowise distin- 
guished from piracy, f 

VattePs words upon the necessity of a declara- 

* Vattel, book ii. chap, xviii. ss. 334, 354, 378 ; Grotius, 
book iii. 

f This has been proved by a decision in the case of Evans v. 
Hutton, in 1842, given by the Chief- Justice Tindal, and the judges 
Coltman, Erskine, and Maule. This case was an action for breach 
of contract. The defendant had contracted to land the plaintiffs 
goods at Canton during the year 1839, but was prevented from 
doing so by Captain Elliot, the Superintendent of Trade, and 
Captain Smith, of Her Majesty's ship Volage. The decision was 
for the plaintiff. The judges unanimously held, that no orders 



122 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

tion of war, and of avoiding its calamities if possible, 
should be ever present to those who think so lightly 
of undertaking military operations. He says : — 

" The right of making war only belongs to nations as a 
remedy against injustice : it is the fruit of an unfortunate 
neces^ty. This remedy is so terrible in its effects, so fatal 
to humanity, so vexatious even to him that makes use of it, 
that national law doubtless permits it only at the last' extre- 
mity ; that is, when every other is of no avail for upholding 
justice. It has been proved in the preceding chapter, that in 
order to be authorised to take up arms it must be, lstly, that 
we have a just subject of complaint ; 2dly, that we have been 
refused a reasonable satisfaction ; 3dly, we have also observed 
that the ruler of a nation must take into mature consider- 
ation whether it is for the good of the state to pursue its 
rights by force of arms. This is still not enough, as it is pos- 
sible that the imminent fear of our arms may make an im- 
pression upon the mind of our adversary, and oblige him to 
render us justice. We owe yet this concession to humanity, 
and, above all, to the blood and repose of the subjects, to de- 
clare to this unjust nation, or to its ruler, that we are going 
to have recourse to the last remedy, and to employ open force 
to bring it to reason. This is what is called to declare war. 



in council having been alleged, the proper authority which Captain 
Elliot possessed among British subjects in China, as Superintendent 
of Trade, had not been made out. They further held, that no 
declaration of war having been alleged, it could not be pretended 
that what he did was in exercise of the Queen's undoubted prero- 
gative. — Report of the East India Committee of the Colonial Society, 
on the Causes and Consequences of the Military Operations in China, 
p. 39. London, 1857. 



NECESSITY OF A DECLARATION OF WAR. 123 

All this is comprehended in the manner of proceeding of the 
Romans ... It is surprising to find amongst the Eomans 
conduct so just, so moderate, and so wise, at a time when it 
would seem that nothing but valour and ferocity was to be 
expected of them. A people which treated war in so religious 
a manner, established very solid foundations for its future 
greatness." * 

Yattel then states, that the declaration of war 
should recite the subject of complaint for which arms 
have been taken up ; and explains that war should 
not be carried on if, after it has been declared, the 
enemy should offer equitable conditions of peace, f 

Let us inquire into a few recent instances of war- 
like operations, and see how far they were undertaken 
in contempt of these canons of international law. 

In the Afghan war there was neither declara- 
tion of war nor just cause of it, since the motive 
assigned was the desire to meet and anticipate 
Russian influence. The China war was undertaken 
without a declaration, or a just cause of war, since it 
arose from the attempt to enforce the introduction of 
opium, a prohibited article, into China. This and 
the Afghan war have been so much written about, 
that it is suflicient here to allude to them. 

In 1858 an infuriated crowd attacked the British 

* Vattel, book iii. chap. iv. sect. 51. 

f Ibid, book iii. chap. iv. sect. 54. Grotius, liv. ii. chap. xxiv. 
sect. 1 : liv. iii. chap. iii. 



124 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

Consul at Jiddah, and killed him, and then pro- 
ceeded to murder the French Consul and some 
Greeks who were in the town. As soon as the news 
was received, the Sultan sent assurances to the 
British and French Embassies that the matter should 
be inquired into, and the guilty punished : his Im- 
perial Majesty, at the same time, sent a sum of money 
from his privy purse to be distributed amongst the 
relatives of the victims. Here, so far from there 
being any disposition to refuse redress for an injury, 
the state in which the injury was done anticipated 
any demand for it, so that no cause of war could 
arise. If the state injured was not satisfied with 
the redress offered, it was open to it to withdraw its 
ambassador, and declare war. Notwithstanding this, 
the British Government, at the same time that it 
was receiving assurances of redress, sent telegraphic 
orders to Captain Pullen, of H. M. ship Cyclops, to 
bombard Jiddah, which orders he executed. This 
precipitation is entirely contrary to the deliberation 
which should precede war, according to all writers on 
international law : an act of war without a declara- 
tion of war was committed, and that whilst negotia- 
tion was going on. The guilty in Jiddah deserved 
punishment, but it was for their sovereign to punish 
them, and a foreign state had no right except to call 
upon him to do justice. Such an event could not 



CONDUCT OF THE FRENCH AT TRIPOLI. 125 

Lave occurred, but for the utter disregard and disre- 
pute into which international law has fallen.* 

The same disregard for law, and preference of 
might to right, was shown in the bombardment of 
Kagosima. Satisfaction for the death of Mr. Richard- 
son had already been given by the Japanese Govern- 
ment, in the shape of an indemnity of one hundred 
thousand pounds ; and by asking for, and accepting 
that indemnity, the British Government had pre- 
cluded itself from further action. 

In 1852 a French fleet appeared before Tripoli, 
in the west, and made a demand, the justice of 
which was doubtful. On the demand being refused, 
the French, instead of treating the matter at Con- 
stantinople, threatened to bombard the town; and 
the Governor was compelled to yield to save it from 
bombardment. 

The evils of these departures from law and usage 
multiply themselves and increase. Cabinets issue 
instructions to carry out acts of war without a pre- 
vious declaration of war in the name of the 
Sovereign, and now subordinate governors improve 
upon this practice, and carry on military operations 
without even the sanction of instructions from home. 
Recently, in 1862, the Governor of Singapore sent 

* For the misconduct which provoked the massacre see the 
two preceding essays. — Editor, 



126 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

to the Sultan of Tringganu, who is entirely inde- 
pendent of the British Government, to demand the 
expulsion from his city of the Sultan of Lingga, 
nephew of the ruler of Tringganu. The ground for 
this demand was the allegation that the Sultan of 
Lingga abetted disturbances in the neighbouring 
state of Pahang — also an independent state. But 
as the Sultan of Tringganu is tributary to Siam, the 
Governor of Singapore also wrote to Bangkok, to 
complain of the presence of the Sultan of Lingga at 
Tringganu, and to ask for his removal. The Go- 
vernor of Singapore did not, however, wait for an 
answer to this application to Bangkok, but sent a 
peremptory demand, backed by a naval force, to 
Tringganu, for the expulsion of the Sultan of Lingga. 
As the ruler of Tringganu had no orders to receive 
from the Governor of Singapore, he naturally re- 
fused to violate the duties of hospitality by compli- 
ance with this ultimatum ; the consequence of which 
was, that the naval force sent from Singapore bom- 
barded Tringganu. This act of war, besides being 
unlawful and unjust, was gratuitous and useless ; for, 
almost at the same time that the bombardment was 
going on, the Siamese answer to the Governor's 
application was being sent to Singapore, to the effect 
that the Siamese Government would send a steamer 
to Tringganu and recall the Sultan of Lingga. The 



UNAUTHORISED BOMBARDMENT OF TRINGGANU. 127 

Siamese Government naturally protested against this 
unlawful and unnecessary violence ; but, apparently, 
without any beneficial result. The conduct of the 
Governor of Singapore was disapproved of,* but in 
terms such as leave it to be supposed, that whilst the 
injudiciousness of his policy was apparent, its viola- 
tion of international law had passed unperceived; 
and the door was not closed, as it should have been, 
upon the possible future commission of similar un- 
lawful acts. 

After this came the Ashanti war, the existence 
of which was only known to the nation after its 
fruitlessness and disastrous consequences had be- 
come public. Here, again, no declaration of war had 
been made ; and in this instance the value of such a 
declaration, as concerning the interests of the nation 
commencing war, as laid down by Yattel, became 
apparent : for if the facts which became public in 
the course of the debate in the House of Commons 
had been known at the outset, it is probable that the 
same result, of refusing to sanction these hostile 
operations, would have been arrived at without the 
loss of life and expenditure which occurred. If it is 
objected that the formalities of a declaration of war 
were superfluous with the Ashanti kingdom, it may 

* Parliamentary papers relative to bombardment of Tringganu, 
1864. 



128 CONTEMPT FOE. INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

be answered that international law makes no dis- 
tinction with regard to states : that law and right 
are to be observed, for the sake of fulfilling a duty 
by the person that observes them, on their own ac- 
count, and irrespective of other considerations. And, 
lastly, as it appears we had an extradition treaty 
with Ashanti, if the kingdom of Ashanti was 
thought worthy of international stipulations, other 
international usages should have been complied with. 

Besides, disregard of right in dealings with one 
country serves as an example for a similar disregard 
in another ; the evil extends and increases, till the 
habitual mixing up of war and peace in China has 
confused the public mind to such an extent that 
public approbation was given to the expedition of 
Garibaldi to Sicily, which in no respects differed 
from the attempt of the Savoyards to seize upon 
Geneva, in 1602, by escalade. The Savoyards failed 
in their attempt, and all their prisoners were hanged. 
Yattel quotes this as an instance of brigandage 
rather than of war,* and says of the execution of 
the prisoners, that " Geneva was not blamed for an 
action which would have been detested in a formal 
war." 

In explaining that no nation has a right to meddle 
with the government of another, and that no sove- 
* Yattel, book iii. chap. iv. sect. 68. 



TRIAL OF PERSONS NOT UNDER JURISDICTION. 129 

reign can set himself up as a judge of the conduct of 
another, Yattel* blames the conduct of the Spaniards 
who brought the Inca Athahualpa to trial : he says, 
" If this prince had violated the law of nations with 
respect to them, they would have had the right to 
punish him. But they accused him of having put 
to death some of his subjects, of having had several 
wives, &c. — things of which he had no account to 
give them. And what crowns their extravagant in- 
justice, they. condemned him by the laws of Spain.' ' 
Two similar instances of violation of international 
law have recently occurred, which it is well to men- 
tion as examples to be avoided. When the Siamese 
conquered Keddah, assisted by some British gun- 
boats, which blockaded that port, one of them com- 
manded by Captain Sherard Osborne, the Sultan of 
Keddah was driven out, but continued to wage war 
upon the Siamese. For this he was subsequently 
brought to trial in a British court of law in the 
Straits Settlements, on a charge of piracy : the deci- 
sion was an acquittal, on the ground that he had not 
been engaged in piracy, but in lawful war. But the 
court had no right of jurisdiction, and the prosecu- 
tion should not have been entertained. Its insti- 
tution was a continuation of the injustice which had 
been done to the Sultan of Keddah by the Straits 

* Vattel, book ii. chap. iv. sect. 55. 

K 



130 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

Government in blockading Keddah and assisting the 
Siamese, whilst the stipulations of the treaty with 
Keddah, under which England holds Pulo Penang 
and Province Wellesley, especially provide that 
England should defend Keddah from any enemy 
coming by sea.* 

The motive for this action of the British Govern- 
ment, so much in opposition to the treaty engage- 
ments, was the desire to obtain a commercial treaty 
with Siam : this policy, nevertheless, entirely failed 
in its object, and a commercial treaty was not 
negotiated with Siam till many years later. Still 
more recently a similar abuse of jurisdiction took 
place at Singapore. An action was brought into 
court there against the ruler of Johore, for acts of 
his in Johore complained of by a Chinaman. Judg- 
ment was given against the ruler of Johore : this 
decision was, however, reversed at Calcutta, where it 
was ruled that the court had no jurisdiction in the 
matter. 

A most flagrant violation of international rights 
was co mmit ted in the summer of 1864, by the 
French Consul at Tunis, who "warned off," and 
attempted to prevent the landing of, the Ottoman 

* An additional illegality was perpetrated against this ruler of 
Keddah, for after this trial and acquittal, instead of being released, 
Tunku Mahomed Said was detained a prisoner for many years ; 
which imprisonment was wholly illegal. 



CONDUCT OF FRENCH CONSUL AT TUNIS. 131 

Commissioner ; that is, an officer of the sovereign of 
the country. The relations of France with Tunis 
(those of a neighbour) would not have justified 
the French Consul with interfering with a public 
officer deputed by any other state, much less then 
with an officer sent by the sovereign. It was said 
at the time that the French Government disap- 
proved his conduct, but the disapproval was not, as 
it should have been, public as the offence. The 
consequence of this act remaining unpunished and 
unnoticed, has been a repetition of the offence a few 
months later in an aggravated form, as narrated in 
the following letter given in the "Times," as re- 
ceived by its Malta correspondent from an authentic 
source in Tunis, and dated Nov. 17 : — 

" A singular incident has just occurred here. From time 
immemorial it has been customary for the Sultans to send 
Commissioners to Tunis, and for the Beys to depute Envoys 
to Constantinople, either to compliment the Sultans on their 
accession to the throne, or to solicit their own firman of in- 
vestiture, or on other matters connected with the affairs of 
the two countries. At the breaking out of the revolt, the 
Sultan despatched an Imperial Commissioner to Tunis to 
report on the state of affairs ; and, in return, the Bey had 
formed a resolution of sending an Envoy to thank his Im- 
perial Majesty for the interest he had evinced in passing 
events. According to custom, he announced his intention 
to the foreign representatives, in order to obtain from them 
letters of introduction for his Envoy to the Ambassadors at 
Constantinople ; but the French Consul, upon being made 



132 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

aware of the Bey's intention, proceeded immediately to his 
Highness, and remonstrated in the strongest possible terms 
against an envoy being sent to the Sultan without the pre- 
vious sanction of the French Government. He insisted that 
it was an Anglo-Turkish intrigue, which he would not to- 
lerate. In vain did the Bey endeavour to explain that it was 
customary both to receive and to send envoys ; and that, in 
the present instance, it was an act of courtesy towards the 
Sultan, who was the head of all Mussulman nations ; and that 
nothing more was either meant or intended. The Consul 
would accept no explanation ; said that the Envoy could not 
leave without his permission, but that he would despatch an 
aviso to Cagliari with a telegram to Paris ; and that until he 
received a reply the departure of the Envoy must be post- 
poned. His Highness having, however, replied to his peremp- 
tory language, that he was at liberty to send for instructions, 
but that he did not intend to alter his resolution of showing 
respect to the Sultan, by deputing General Khaireddin to con- 
vey to him his grateful thanks ; the French Consul rose, 
evinced much impatience, and left the room, after crying out 
1 No ! no ! no ! ' when he refused to take the hand which the 
Bey had offered to him. This unfortunate incident, coupled 
with a previous threat of sinking the Sultan's Commissioner, 
when he arrived in May last, in case he should attempt to 
land, determined the Bey, with a view to avoid further em- 
barrassment, to hasten the departure of his Envoy, who was 
therefore directed to proceed on his journey on the 14th, in- 
stead of the 17th inst. General Khaireddin, consequently, 
embarked on board the Tunisian steamer Bechir, about half- 
past six in the evening ; but a French officer was sent to 
him on the part of the commandant of the ironclad, Invin- 
cible, stationed at the Goletta, to dissuade him from pro- 
ceeding on his journey ; and when he was told that he was 
bound to execute his orders, the officer announced to him 
that, in that case, he would be prevented. General Khaireddin 






FRENCH IN COCHIN-CHINA. 133 

then said that he should follow instructions, and would only 
yield to superior force, as he was not authorised to lose the 
steamer and sacrifice the lives of the crew. He gave the 
officer sufficient time to carry his answer to the captain of the 
Invincible, which was all this time firing rockets and burning 
blue lights, when he weighed anchor, and at half-steam passed 
the ironclad. When about 1000 yards ahead of her, the In- 
vincible chased the Tunisian steamer, which put on full 
steam, and kept ahead of her pursuer, until they both neared 
the Island of Zembri, at the entrance of the bay, when the 
Tunisian steamer boldly passed through the Straits between 
the island and the mainland. It being perilous for a large 
vessel to attempt the passage at night, the Invincible had 
no other alternative but either to make the circuit of the 
island or return to her anchorage. She preferred the latter 
course, and the Tunisian steamer and Envoy thus escaped 
being captured in Tunisian waters by the vessel of a foreign 
and a friendly power. This affair, which is attributed to the 
political intemperance of the French representative, has created 
a very painful sensation in Tunis. It has utterly disgusted 
the Tunisian authorities ; and it has humbled the Europeans 
to think that so open a violation of every principle of public 
right and international law should be perpetrated by the agent 
of a great and powerful nation against a weak government, which 
it pretends to protect against the encroachments of others."* 

Another fruit of the aggression on China has 
been a similar aggression on Cochin- China. France 
had no just cause of war in Cochin- China, for if 
any of her Missionaries were killed in that country 
the fault was theirs, and their going there and 
preaching in defiance of the Government was in 

* This Consul has been removed in consequence. 



134 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

itself an aggression.* France, however, did not 
carry war into Cochin- China only for the sake of 
avenging a few Missionaries ; they may have been 
the pretext : but the motive was to seize upon the 
country for the sake of establishing a colonial em- 
pire, and following the example of England. 
England, however, was more to blame than for her 
example only; for had she not invited the co-opera- 
tion of France in China, and so occasioned the de- 
spatch of twelve thousand troops to China, it is 
doubtful if France would have sanctioned the send- 
ing of those troops to Cochin- China only for the 
problematic establishment of a colony: but the 
French nation imagined, when these troops were 
sent to China, that they were sent for our assistance, 
and in return for concessions to be made by us in 
their Italian policy, and much bitterness was felt 
and expressed by them when they found these 
hopes disappointed. A treaty has just been con- 
cluded by France with Cochin- China, restoring part 
of the conquered territory and retaining a "pro- 
tectorate " over another part, with an indemnity of 
a hundred millions of francs to be paid to France, f 
It was not to be expected that the example set in 

* Vattel, book ii. chap. i. sect, 7. 

f This treaty has not been ratified, and France retains the con- 
quered provinces. 



MERCENARIES AND FOREIGN LEGIONS. 135 

China should not be followed, especially since bad 
examples are more readily followed than good ones. 
When neighbouring nations quarrelled and fought 
there usually was some excuse, if not in the amount 
of injury of which one or other had to complain, 
at least in the mutual animosity and strife fomented 
by long years of rivalry ; but in the case of these 
distant nations beyond the seas, those excuses are 
wanting : feelings of hostility do not exist, and these 
wars, so lightly undertaken, have a strong similarity 
to brigandage. They have another base feature, in 
that they are all waged by the powerful against the 
weak, and so can boast of none of those acts of 
valour and daring which give a relief to wars 
amongst equals, and which ennoble the career of the 
soldier fighting for his country in a just cause. 
For the justice of the war not only adds to the fame 
of the soldier, but it augments his valour. Grotius 
insists much upon this point, and condemns mer- 
cenaries,* and soldiers who, fighting for pay or 
plunder, make a trade of war. It is on this point 
that Vattel falls below Grotius, for, being a Swiss, 
and seeing what the Swiss practice was, he accepted 
in this respect what existed, without examining 
whether it was right, and he attempts to defend 

* Grotius, liv. iii. chap. xxv. sect. 9. 



136 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

mercenaries on grounds of utility and advantage.* 
That Grotius is right and Yattel wrong is proved by 
the fact, that whilst formerly soldiers trading in wars 
just or unjust, in the service of foreign princes, were 
called, and called themselves, ."mercenaries," this 
name has now become a term of reproach, and such 
troops are now designated as " foreign legions." On 
this point the opinion of an eminent author may 
be cited : — 

" It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in 
Europe, that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports 
unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to sup- 
port them ; for most of the men who wage such, wage them 
gratis : but for an unjust war, men's bodies and souls have 
both to be bought ; and the best tools of war for them besides, 
which makes such war costly to the maximum . . . And all 
unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, 
only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by sub- 
sequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in 
the matter ;. the capitalists' will being the primary root of the 
war : but its real root is the covetousness of the whole 
nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, 
and bringing about therefore, in due time, his own separate 
loss and punishment to each person." f 

To conclude, there is no mystery in interna- 
tional law; and though every one may not study 
it, each man may understand what are international 

* Vattel, hook iii. chap. ii. sect. 13. 

f Ruskin's Essays, " Unto this Last," p. 154. London, 1862. 



IN WHAT INTERNATIONAL DUTIES CONSIST. 137 

rights and duties, by becoming convinced of that 
which forms the basis of international right ; and 
that consists in the consideration of nations as in- 
dividuals, and in the fact that there is no separate 
standard between states and individuals : for as in- 
dividuals compose a nation, so nations compose 
humanity ; and the rights of nations and their ob- 
ligations to each other in no wise differ from those 
which exist between individuals ; and as the law, 
whether criminal, civil, or poor law, recognises no 
difference between men of different classes or reli- 
gions, learned or unlearned, in the same manner 
international law, which depends upon right and 
wrong, which are immutable, cannot vary between 
nations, however different their position in the world 
may be. And the key-stone of international as of 
individual duty is the Divine command, to " do unto 
others as you would they should do unto you."* 

* "What is permitted to one nation is permitted to every other, 
and what is forbidden to one nation is equally forbidden to every 
other.'' — Vattel, "Preliminaries" sect. 19. 

" The seat of judicial authority is indeed locally here in the 
belligerent country, according to the known law and practice of 
nations, but the law itself has no locality. It is the duty of the 
person who sits here to determine the question exactly as he 
would determine it sitting at Stockholm ; to assert no pretension 
on the part of Great Britain which he would not allow to Sweden 
in the same circumstances, and to impose no duties on Sweden 
as a neutral country, which he would not admit to belong to Great 
Britain in the same character." — Lord S to?/; ell. 



138 CONTEMPT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

All the false notions which now obtain with regard 
to international obligations have come in nnder 
cover of the phrase, "Religion has nothing to do 
with politics." 

By means of this phrase, such words as policy, 
expediency, and other ambiguous terms, invented to 
cover a dubious transaction, have led men to ap- 
prove of in public matters what they would condemn 
in private matters. Religion means a sense of ac- 
countability in a future state, and so religion has 
to do with, every act that men can do in this world ; 
and if an account has to be given for every idle 
word, surely public acts affecting a large number of 
fellow- creatures must be still more a subject of ac- 
count than private acts affecting the happiness only 
of a few. 



139 



IV. 



ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

(Written in 1833.) 

" Never in the course of their history have Mahometans 
been brought into contact with any form of Christianity that was 
not too degenerate in its rites, its doctrines, and its effects, to 
be worthy of their esteem." — Smith and Dwight's "Missionary 
Researches," vol. ii. p. 334. 

During that distracted period which followed the 
Greek war, I happened to be present at the sack 
of a Greek village by Albanians. After the seizure 
or destruction of the little it contained they 
turned their eyes to a chapel which stood at some 
distance, and made a rush in that direction, either 
with the view of securing, or of destroying and in- 
sulting, the remnants of its service and the symbols 
of its worship. As they reached its threshold a 
Mussulman Dervish suddenly presented himself, and 
grasping with extended arms both posts of the door 
exclaimed, "You can only enter here over my 
body." At the time I believed the contest to be 



140 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

religious and right on the side of the Christians, 
because of the fanaticism of the Turks. Words 
cannot render my astonishment : I saw that I was 
wholly in error, and I applied myself to inquire. 
It is with a profound consciousness of incapacity 
that I approach this subject. It is to a future age 
that it will remain to analyse that portion of the 
history of man, our general ignorance of which is 
summed up in the word " Mahometanism." 

Islam is divided into two portions — Iruan (Faith), 
and Din, which I will render, Practice. It comes 
nearer to the French term culte. It is not the 
dogmatic, but the practical portion of Islam which 
has influenced the moral, social, legal, and political 
ideas and circumstances of its professors. This, 
then, is the branch to which I will apply myself. 
The hold it has over man we naturally refer to its 
dogmas, because such is the only hold that religion 
has oyer us. Our religion is neither the rule of the 
courts of law, nor does it decide upon the policy of 
the state. We, therefore, hold religion and policy 
different things, and do not, even in expression, so 
much as conceive a connexion between religion and 
jurisprudence. What, then, are to us religion, in- 
stitutions, and honour — powerful as motives, but 
distinct in their application, and sometimes opposed 
— is for them all contained in that one word, 



ISLAM EMBODIES THE IDEA OE COUNTRY. 141 

" Islam." It is patriotism, legality, tradition, con- 
stitution, right. 

While I separate dogma from practice, referring 
the constitution of Eastern society to the latter, still 
the dogma has materially affected this state of the 
East, in consequence of the influence of Christian 
feelings on the policy of Eastern Governments. 
However contrary such impulses may be to that 
charity which is the essential character of true 
Christianity, and to those interests which it is the 
avowed purpose of that policy to sustain, I am, 
therefore, induced to say something on this head, 
convinced that the Christian who knows their belief 
will cease to revile ; and when he observes the in- 
fluence of their devotional feelings on their lives, 
will deem them worthy of sympathy, if not of 
imitation.* 

The unity and the immateriality of the Deity 
is the grand doctrine. The contemplation of the 
greatness, power, and goodness of God, is the devo- 
tional exercise. The five cardinal points are, — 
the Profession of the Faith ; Prayer, called by 
Mahomet the pillar of religion and the key of 

* I once heard an American Missionary at Constantinople, 
distinguished for his zealous and successful efforts (Dr. Goodall), 
thus address some young Missionaries who were expressing them- 
selves contemptuously of the Turks, — " You will see practised here 
the virtues we talk of in Christendom." 



142 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

Paradise ; the Fast of Ramazan ; Almsgiving, 
which is a practical regulation of the charity incul- 
cated towards their fellow-men. The Pilgrimage 
to Mecca was but a regulation, in accordance with 
previous habits, to maintain the unity of doctrine, 
and to refresh the zeal and ardour of its professors. 
The injunction regarding washing and cleanliness 
is an accessory to prayer. Sale, in his " Preliminary 
Dissertation," p. 139, says : — 

" That his followers might be more punctual in this duty, 
Mohammed is said to have declared that the practice of re- 
ligion is founded on cleanliness, which is the one half of the 
faith, and the key of prayer, without which it will not be 
heard by God. That these expressions may be the better 
understood, Al Ghazali reckons four degrees of purification ; 
of which the first is the cleansing of the body from all pollu- 
tion, filth, and excrement ; the second, the cleansing of the 
members of the body from all wickedness and unjust actions ; 
the third, the cleansing of the heart from all blameable incli- 
nations and odious vices ; and the fourth, the purging a man's 
secret thoughts from all affections which may divert their at- 
tendance on God ; adding, that the body is but the outward 
shell with respect to the heart, which is as the kernel. And 
for this reason he highly complains of those who are super- 
stitiously solicitous in exterior purifications, avoiding those 
persons as unclean who are not so scrupulously nice as them- 
selves, and at the same time have their minds lying waste 
and overrun with pride, ignorance, and hypocrisy. "Whence it 
plainly appears, with how little foundation the Mahometans 
have been charged by some writers with teaching or imagining 
that these formal washings alone cleanse them from their 



THE FAITH OF THE MUSSULMANS. 143 

The Mussulmans believe with the Christians in 
an Omnipotent God, Creator of all things ; in the 
immortality of the soul ; in the resurrection of the 
body ; in the recompense and punishments of a 
future life. In respect to the remission of sins and 
justification, the Mussulman comes much nearer to 
the Calvinist than some other sects of Christianity 
(and they compose by far the greatest portion) who 
admit of works as justification. They believe with 
the Unitarians, Socinians, Arminians, and other sects, 
in the prophetic character of Christ.* They believe 
with the Lutherans, Calvinists, &c, in justification 
by faith, and not by works, and with the latter 
sect in predestination. While subordinate to those 
distinctions they concur with Protestantism in the 
grounds of its separation from the Church of Rome. 

* " I have, I think, put the parallel between Mahometanism 
and Socinianism in a pretty clear light. I could carry it farther 
to the disadvantage of our Unitarians, who are at a greater distance 
from the truth than the Mussulmans in the articles of the crea- 
tion, of the knowledge of God, of providence, of predestination, 
and of the state of human souls after death." — Catholic Tract, 
quoted by Mr. Forster, vol. ii. p. 500. 

" Jesus Christ is revered by all the doctors as the greatest 
of the Prophets before the Arabian Legislator ; as the Messiah of 
nations and the Spirit of God. The Saviour is regarded as pre- 
destined to return in the plenitude of ages, to reassemble all men 
in unity of one belief." — D'Ohsson, vol. i. p. 427. 

" The Christian heretics all verge towards Unitarianism, that 
is, Mahometanism." — Mahometanism Unveiled, vol. i. p. 305. 



144 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

Yery possibly I may surprise the reader when I 
state that the Mussulmans believe in the inspired 
writings, at least in the Pentateuch, the Psalms of 
David, and the Gospels. A Mussulman may differ 
from a Christian in the interpretation of a passage, 
but he does not deny the " Law and the Testi- 
mony." The sects of Christianity with which the 
Mussulmans have come into contact can scarcely be 
said to have had the Bible. 

The character of Mahomet is, perhaps, the point 
which has produced the most unfavourable impres- 
sion on Christians. But, in fact, we have erred in 
this matter. He himself disclaims the power of 
working miracles, does not pretend to salvation out 
of good works, nor is he designated by his followers 
by any other title save that which is common to 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and which is used to 
one another at the present day by friends in familiar 
discourse. Anything more would be inconsistent 
with their all-absorbing idea of the Deity. Ma- 
homet is not ranked so high by the Mussulmans as 
are the saints in the Romish Church. But a large 
portion of the Mussulmans, the Wahabees, had re- 
jected even the use of that name by which we chose 
to know the body. In the formula of their faith 
they have substituted, in the place of La ilia ha 
iV Allah Muhammad resul Illah (There is no Deity 



THE WAHABYS. 145 

but God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God), La 
illalid iV Allah malik yawn eddin (There is no Deity 
but God, the Lord of the day of judgment). Now 
the doctrines of the Wahabees were admitted by so 
many of the Ulemah, in every portion of the Em- 
pire, to be in strict conformity with the original 
principles of their faith, that the suppression of that 
sect was felt to be the only means by which a 
political division of the Ottoman Empire could be 
prevented ; and the Western Mussulmans lent them- 
selves to the purposes of the state on this occasion, 
through the apprehension of the consequence of the 
hostility of Christendom in the event of any division 
taking place between the Mussulmans. The ¥a- 
habee reformation would have brought Islam into 
the closest resemblance with Protestantism; and 
it is curious to remark, that while the use made 
of the prejudices of Christians has prevented this 
consummation, millions of Christians* have aposta- 
tised through the violence of a European power, who 
has acquired this means of indirectly propagating 
Islam from the support it obtains from Christian 
fanaticism. 

At the time of the Reformation, the Mussulmans 



* The Circassians, the Lesghis, &c. See " Progress of Eussia 
in the East," by Sir John M'Neill. 



146 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

were considered as religious allies.* To say nothing 
of Lollards and other sectarians, fellowship with them 
was admitted by Cromwell, and unambiguously ex- 
pressed by Queen Elizabeth, in a letter to Sultan 
Murad. If, as Iconoclasts, the Catholics conceive 
that they ought religiously to be made war upon, 
and expelled from Europe, it might have been 
imagined that the Protestants, in parity of reasoning, 
would have taken the opposite view of the question.! 
The fact is, that the intercourse of latter times be- 
tween the East and the West has consisted in a 
reverberation of prejudice and an exchange of 
wrong. 

The following extracts from the orthodox creed 
will not be read without interest: — 

" Praise be to God, the Creator and Restorer of all things, 
Who does whatsoever He pleases, Who is Master of the glo- 
rious throne and mighty force, and directs His sincere servants 
into the right way and the straight path ; Who favoureth 



* There are, in Count Mailette's " History of Hungary," some 
curious facts respecting the mutual good will of the Turks and 
the Protestants, which the author had difficulty in reconciling with 
the received notions, and therefore represented the Turks as dis- 
posed to abandon Islam, because, where they had no mosques, they 
frequented Protestant churches. 

} " The Mussulmans are Christians, if Locke reasons justly, 
because they firmly believe the immaculate conception, divine 
character, and miracles of the Messiah." — Sir William Jones, 
u Asiat. JResear." vol. i. p. 275, 



THE ORTHODOX CREED. 147 

them after their having borne testimony to the Unity, with 
the preservation of their confessions from the darknesses of 
doubt and hesitation ;* Who directs them to follow His chosen 
Apostle, upon whom be the blessing and the peace of God ! 
Who maketh known to them, as touching His essence, He is 
One and hath no partner ; Singular, and hath no like ; Unique, 
having no contrary ; Separate, having no equal. That He is 
Ancient, having no first ; Eternal, having no beginning ; 
Everlasting, having no end; to be described by glorious 
attributes ; subject to no decree ; determined by no limits 
or times ; but is the First and the Last, and is within and 
without. 

" Neither doth He exist in anything ; neither doth any- 
thing exist in Him ; neither is there anything besides Himself 
in His essence ; nor is His essence in any other beside Him. 
And that as to the attributes of His perfection, He wants no 
additional perfection. And He is known to exist by the ap- 
prehension of the understanding, and is seen, as by ocular in- 
tuition, out of His mercy and grace, by the holy in the eternal 
Mansion, completing their joy by the vision of His glorious 
presence. 

" And that He (praised be His name !) is living, powerful 
mighty, omnipotent ; not liable to any defect, or impotence ; 
Who neither slumbers nor sleeps, nor is obnoxious to decay 
nor death. To Whom belongs the kingdom, and the power, 
and the might. His is the dominion and the excellency, and 
the creation and the command thereof; the Heavens are 
folded up in His right hand, and all the creatures are couched 
within His grasp. His Excellency consists in His creating and 
producing ; and His Unity in communicating existence, and 



* The difference between the Sheeites and the Soonees is one, 
according to our ideas, of a political rather than of a religious 
character. It is, indeed, considered religious by themselves, be- 
cause with them everything is religion. 



148 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

Original. He created men and their works, and measured out 
their maintenance and their determined times. Nothing can 
escape His grasp that is possible; nor the vicissitudes of 
things get out of the reach of His power. The effects of His 
power are innumerable, and the objects of His knowledge 
infinite. 

" Now He produced creatures anew for the manifestation 
of His power and His precedent will, and the confirmation of 
His word, which was true from all eternity ; not that He stood 
in need of them, or wanted them : and that He manifestly de- 
clared His glory in creating, and producing, and commanding, 
without being under any obligation ; not out of necessity, 
since loving-kindness, and showing favour, and grace, and be- 
neficence belong to Him ; whereas it is in His power to pour 
forth upon men variety of torments, and afflict them with 
various kinds of sorrows and diseases ; which, if He should do, 
it would be justice in Him ; not reproachful, nor injustice. 
And that He rewards those that worship Him for their obe- 
dience upon the account of His promise and beneficence, not 
of their merit, nor of necessity ; since there is nothing which 
He can be tied to perform, nor can any injustice be feigned in 
Him, nor can He be under any obligation to any person what- 
soever. 

" But that the creatures are obliged to serve Him ariseth 
from His having declared, by the tongues of the Prophets, that 
it was due to Him from them; not by the simple dictates 
of the understanding, but that He sent them Messengers, whose 
veracity He had proved by manifest miracles* who brought 
down from Him to men commands, and promises, and 
threats. 

" Furthermore, that He doth speak, command, forbid, pro- 
mise, and threaten by an eternal ancient Word, subsisting in 



* This does not refer to Mohammed, who disclaimed the power 
of working miracles. 



THE RISE OF ISLAM. 149 

His essence. . . . And that the Koran, the Pentateuch, the 
Psalms of David, and the Gospels, are books sent down by 
Him to His Apostles." 

The foregoing will suffice to show that their 
belief warrants the conclusion to which I have been 
led by experience, that the Mussulmans entertain no 
antipathy to the Christians on religious grounds. I 
shall now address myself to the civil and political 
branches of the system. 

Islam is regarded in Europe as a " religion of 
blood," and as having extended itself by the sword. 
Whatever, or however favourable may be the opinions 
of any person in reference to Oriental manners and 
Turkish character, this anti-social maxim is held to 
be a fundamental portion of their belief and their 
institutions. If it be erroneous, great is the wrong 
we do, and how universal ! 

The small beginnings of the system render it 
difficult, if not impossible, to conceive how it could 
progress by physical means, and through the violation 
of law and policy. Here no numerous race adopted 
suddenly a principle of intolerance ; here no anti- 
quated system became inquisitorial and fanatic, and 
used the authority acquired, and the power realised, 
by the virtues of ancestors, to trample on the out- 
raged feelings of man or the laws of nature. Islam, 
so wonderfully successful as a system as to reach 



150 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

almost to its full growth, in its earlier infancy, 
could only progress through superiority over coeval 
systems.* 

Mahomet was the only founder of a religion who 
was at the same time a temporal prince and a warrior. 
Their power lay exclusively in restraining violence and 
ambition ; his temptation was ambition, and the sword 
was at his disposal. It is therefore to be expected, that 
making religion a means to temporal power, and hav- 
ing obtained that sway over the minds of his followers, 
by which they accepted as law and right whatever he 
chose to promulgate, his code should be found at vari- 
ance with all others, and even in opposition to those 
dictates of justice which are implanted in the breasts of 

* One of the courtiers of Heraclius thus explained, in a 
council at Antioch, the cause of the astonishing and alarming pro- 
gress of the Arabs : — 

" The victories of the Arabs are to be ascribed solely to the 
perfection of those institutions and of that religion by which they 
were restrained from evil and stimulated to the performance of 
virtue. From this alone, and from no other circumstance, they 
derived those irresistible energies which, as men and as soldiers, 
gave them a decided superiority over all that had been employed 
against them." — Price's " Mahometanism" vol. i. p. 71. 

After several chapters, in which the Arabs are only mentioned 
as fanatics, spreading their creed by the sword, Major Price slips 
in the following observation : — " It may be once for all observed, 
that in the early stage of their progress towards foreign dominion 
the disciples of Mahommed were seldom, if ever, known to be 
extremely urgent for a change in point of faith." — P. 93. 



CHARACTER OF MAHOMED. 151 

all men. If, then, we find that it is not so — if we find 
him establishing maxims of right in international 
dealings, of clemency in the use of victory, modera- 
tion in that of power, above all, of toleration in reli- 
gion, we must acknowledge that, amongst men who 
have run a distinguished course, he possesses peculiar 
claims to the admiration of his fellow-creatures. The 
Arabs were a people of rapine. His followers im- 
plicitly believed, and this was all his world. There 
were no nations around whose feelings he had to 
respect, admiration to win, or censure to dread : 
his conduct is therefore referable solely to his own 
internal instincts, and to that obedience to the whisper 
of conscience which must be a condition of all great- 
ness, and in which may truly be said to reside the 
character of man ; the germ of which, though born 
with each of us, has on this populous earth, during 
the ages of its existence, so seldom ripened to ma- 
turity. 

A private man made himself to be looked upon 
as a prophet by his own family. A simple Arab 
united the distracted, " the scanty, naked, and hun- 
gry tribes of Arabia/ ' into one compact and obedient 
body, and presented them with new attributes and a 
new character among the people of the earth. In 
less than thirty years this system defeated the Em- 
peror of Constantinople, overthrew the Kings of 



152 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

Persia, subdued Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and ex^ 
tended its conquests from the Atlantic to the Cas- 
pian and the Oxus ; from which limits, during twelve 
centuries, its political sway has never receded, while 
the faith has continued to extend^ and is at this hour 
extending in Northern Asia, in Central Africa, on 
the Caspian, and the Adriatic. 

A combination so extraordinary, and events of 
such magnitude, flowing from the ideas patiently 
developed during fifteen years by a solitary Arab, 
friendless, unknown, and dwelling in the desert or 
the cave, are not to be explained by phrases, whe- 
ther employed by the vulgar or the philosopher. 
These changes were not effected by the outpouring 
of nomade hordes, by the progress of military 
aggression, or the gradual extension of diplomatic 
dominion ; they were brought about within a single 
lifetime by men's thoughts, and have endured 
through forty generations, not through prescription, 
but by attachment. 

Islam has never interfered with the dogmas of 
any faith, never persecuted, never established an 
Inquisition, never aimed at proselytism. It offered 
its religion, but never enforced it ; and the accept- 
ance of that religion conferred co-equal rights with 
the conquering body, and emancipated the van- 
quished states from the conditions which every con- 



CAUSES OF ITS RISE. 153 

queror, since the world existed up to the period of 
Mahomet, has invariably imposed. For its proselytes 
there was no obligation of denial and reyilement of 
their former creed ; the repetition of a single phrase 
was the only form required or pledge exacted.* 

The two great faiths with which it stood in 
opposition, Judaism and the Greek Church, were 
declared to be the models, and their "Book," or 
Bible, the fountain of the faith of Islam ; at the same 
time it swept away the power and taxes usurped by 
the Church, which at that period oppressed the 
Christians of the East not less than the political 
despotism under which they groaned, while it also 
diminished a very large proportion of the religious 
observances, penances, and superstitions previously 
in force in both religions ; preserving in this respect 
a happy medium between the conservation of preju- 
dices deeply rooted and the destruction of practices 
associated with them which had become too onerous 
to bear. 

It is not at the present day that we can judge of 
the effect of a conqueror preaching to his subjects 
and a general praying with his men. It is not at 

* Gibbon says, "The repetition of a phrase and the loss of a 
foreskin," was all that Islam required : but circumcision is not 
obligatory. 



154 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

the present day that we can estimate the awe and 
respect imposed upon mankind, the enthusiasm and 
devotion animating the people, or the phalanx who 
proclaimed the majesty of God, and the necessity of 
His worship through the observance of good faith 
between man and man ; who exhibited examples of 
love in the household, devotion in the temple, union 
in the camp, valour in the field : who associated with 
themselves at once the loftiest conceptions of natural 
devotion and the most trivial observances of personal 
cleanliness. 

The faiths with which it stood in competition 
were Christianity, chiefly as represented by the 
Greek Church ; Judaism, then possessed of great 
political and military power; and Fire-worship. 
With the latter we have little to do, although it is 
also associated with Islam in reference to all the 
doctrines which it holds in common with Christ- 
ianity ; as, for instance, that most remarkable of all, 
the resurrection of the body, re-promulgated on the 
banks of the Oxus 600 years before the Christian 
era. As regards Judaism and Christianity, Islam 
adopted them as its models ; they were the sources of 
its faith. The same revered personages were alike 
prophets and teachers for all three ; there was blood 
alliance. 



NOT HOSTILE TO CHRISTIANITY AT ITS RISE. 155 

Islam did not rise under any persecution from 
these creeds. There could be no bitterness, even of 
circumstances. In Arabia its first persecution was 
by, as its subsequent wars were carried on with, 
the local idolatry, and in the course of this period 
the Jews and the Christians in Arabia seem to have 
been considered its allies : it was impossible that 
there could be rancour against either, and unless 
such a passion had existed in the highest degree, it 
was impossible to make religion the ground of a war 
of invasion. These considerations appear to me to 
supersede all argument, and to put aside all testi- 
mony ; the thing was impossible. 

How the reverse should be stated by the Mus- 
sulman and Christian writers of early times, and, 
consequently, thereafter believed, is easily explained. 
To the Mussulman the word Religion stands in lieu 
of State. Where we would say, " There was a meet- 
ing of the people/' they would say, " There was a 
meeting of believers." Every act is referred to 
God ; all authority thence derived. War was with 
them a judicial matter, so that they would speak of 
religion commanding a war as we would speak of 
religion co mm anding charity, or love, yet without 
the one being more an act of fanaticism than the 
other. This is a general habit of mind and form of 
expression, but there then comes a purposed mis- 



156 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

application, to prove its claims to Divine favour. 
The Mussulman would speak of his religion as 
being propagated by the sword;* which words, 
indeed, would .strictly signify that his side had 
triumphed. The Christian writers in the same 
spirit would assert the same thing, as charging 
violence and injustice on their antagonists. Besides, 
to Christians a difference of religion was, indeed, 
a ground of war, and that not merely in dark times 
and by fanatics. The great restorer of international 
law in Europe, Grrotius himself, formally excepts 
the Mussulmans from all participation in the com- 
munity of rights which he lays down, and the 
permanent piracy of Malta was sustained by the 
chivalry of Europe, and into it were periodically 
drafted the scions of its noble, princely, and regal 
houses. I may further add, that throughout the 
Mussulman world the belief that the sword is the 
weapon of Christianity is quite as common as in 
Christendom that counter - belief which we are 
examining. 

The expansion of Islam is, therefore, to be looked 
for in its own inherent character, in the genius of its 

* Amongst them the sword does not represent the idea of 
violence ; and so the succession of the Caliphate was hy Mahomet 
remitted to the sword. It conveyed the sense of an appeal to the 
God of Battles — a judicial duel. 



CAUSES OF ITS EXPANSION. 157 

founder, in the qualifications of its earliest apostles, 
the system of its political administration, the con- 
dition of rival creeds, and the circumstances of 
surrounding nations : and if it be a rule of phi- 
losophy to content ourselves with sufficient causes 
for any effect, and to abstain from introducing hy- 
pothetical ones, we will be dispensed in this case 
from admitting the argument of religious com- 
pulsion, which would not only be superfluous as an 
hypothetical cause, but destructive of the practical 
ones which account for the result. 

At the time that the Mussulmans crossed Arabia 
Petrsea, and showed themselves in Syria, the two 
great empires of the East, the Greek and the 
Persian, and the two religions which prevailed in 
these states, were alike corrupt and tottering, op- 
pressive to the nations by hopeless burdens and 
intolerable observances ; revolt and schism were the 
common characters of both, and the appearance on 
their respective thrones of princes of extraordinary 
spirit and capacity had only the effect of adding 
hatred, invasion and war, to the sum of the cala- 
mities of each, severally incapable of reconstruction. 
The Christians in their internal schisms sought 
support from the Parsee Monarch, and on the meta- 
physical points of Unitarianism and Dualism, as 
bearing on the nature of Christ. The warlike in- 



158 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

habitants of the mountain ranges, extending from 
the Euxine down to the borders of Egypt, having 
taken the side opposed to that then espoused by 
Heraclius, these countries, on religious grounds, 
were more favourably disposed to the Persian 
than to the Christian monarch. Religious animosity 
being thus fervidly excited at home, was in abey- 
ance as between Christian and Parsee. The power 
of the two states was equally in abeyance. The 
history of time will therefore not afford a con- 
juncture more favourable for the interposition be- 
tween them of a new system, at once religious and 
political, respectfully observing the creed of each, 
and employing the sanction of its new faith to esta- 
blish beneficial maxims of civil and political freedom. 
These were the two conditions of respect for reli- 
gious feelings, subversion of governing system, so 
as to induce the people to make a sacrifice in regard 
to the first in order to secure the benefits of the 
latter. This is precisely what was done. The 
Unitarian doctrine of Islam, in the sense of the 
Godhead, fell in with the Unitarian doctrines of the 
Monophysites and Monothelites, with respect to 
Christ ; indeed, the same terms were used for both ; 
and that hitherto unobserved coincidence of Islam 
with the Mazdasnians might seduce the Persians into 
the belief that they had but modified the forms of 



ITS EFFECT ON THE GOVERNED. 159 

their Church without abandoning its profession.* 
Islam put an end to infanticide, then prevalent in 
the surrounding countries. Christianity might be 
equally opposed, but was not equally successful. It 
put an end to slavery, the adscription to the soil.f 
It gave equality of political rights, and administered 
even-handed justice, J not only to those who professed 
its religion, but to those who were conquered by its 
arms. It reduced taxation ; the sole tribute to the 
state consisting of the tenth. It freed commerce 
from all charges and impediments ; it freed the pro-, 
fessors of other faiths of all forced contribution to 
their Church or their clergy, and of all religious 
contribution whatever to the dominant creed. It 
communicated all the privileges of the conquering 

* I can do no more than here indicate the importance of the 
language then employed with reference to the terms. Throughout 
the mountains, from the Taurus downwards, the Syriac was then 
in use. The Armenians had adopted the Chaldaic and Syriac 
characters and religious literature, so that their religious shib- 
boleths consisted, as against the Greek and the doctrines of Con- 
stantinople, in those very identical terms by which Islam appears 
in the present day to place itself in opposition to Christianity. 

f Slavery in the East is not the slavery of Europe, as this 
single incident will show. Othman, to appease the tumult in 
which he perished, offered freedom to the slaves who would lay 
down their arms. 

I In reporting a case between an Arab and one of the princes 
of the tribe, the Caliph Omar says, — " I told him (the Prince) 
that that was no matter, for they were both Mussulmans, and 
therefore equal." 



160 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

class to those of the conquered who conformed to its 
religion, and all the protection of citizenship to those 
who did not. It secured property, abolished usury, 
and the private revenge of blood.* It inculcated 
cleanliness and sobriety : it did not inculcate them 
only, but it produced and established them. It 
put an end to licentiousness, and associated with 
charity to the poor the forms of respect for all. 
Success in either of those points was enough for the 
triumph of any system. 

Such were the offensive weapons of Islam. Con- 
versions with these wings flew so rapidly in the 
rear of the Black Eagle of the Saracens, that future 

* On the occasion of the last pilgrimage that the Prophet of 
the Arabs conducted to Mecca, he is represented "pronouncing 
as he went along a discourse of singular sublimity and eloquence, 
in which he solemnly declared the property of his followers, as 
well as their persons, reciprocally sacred and inviolable to one 
another, in the same degree as they held the solemnities in which they 
were mutually engaged that day, in the same sacred place." " Know," 
said he, " that I have brought under foot the institutes and usages 
of ignorance and infidelity. The homicide, therefore, which pre- 
viously occurred among you, I also absolve from revenge; and the 
blood for which I shall first pronounce absolution is that of my 
cousin Rebbiah, the son of Mareth. In the same manner, and 
with the same solemnity, have I abolished the usurious practices 
of the period of reprobation ; and the contracts of usury -which I 
shall first prescribe and annul are those of my uncle Abbas, the 
son of Abdul Mutaleb, in order that revenge for blood and claims 
for usury may be first abrogated in my own family." — Price's 
" Mahometanism," vol. i. p. 608. 



ITS HUMANISING EFFECT. 161 

ages, seeing nothing but victories, have accounted for 
the inexplicable fact by an impossible theory.* 

Instead of Islam having introduced a bloodthirsty 
spirit amongst the Arabs, it had precisely the con- 
trary effect. Mahomet, from reasons which the event 
justified, refused to appoint his successor, notwith- 
standing his own anxious desire that a certain man 
should succeed him. He did everything to induce 
the people to select Ali, though he would not nomi- 
nate him. He went even so far as to place him 
on the Minbar above himself. Ali, though inva^ 
riably regarded as the first of the Mussulmans, was 
passed over on three elections. It was not that he 
was judged to be deficient in any of the qualities 
requisite for a chief, but because he was a man 
inured to bloodshed. Speaking of the election of 
Abu Beker, Major Price says, — "But this was only 
the first of three successors in which the preten- 
sions of the distinguished chieftain Ali were baffled 
or overlooked, with no other exception to his choice 
than that [among a nation of homicides) he was al- 
leged to be a man of blood. Not less decisive are 
the epithets of those preferred to him — Abu Beker, 
the just; Omar, the patriarchal; Othman, the 
pacific." 

* " On one day, no less than 20,000 Christians, Jews, and 
Magians, embraced the Mahometan faith." — Sale, "Preliminary 
Discourse" p. 209. . 

M 



162 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

Having thus shown, on general grounds, the un- 
likelihood of the existence at the basis of this system 
of so anti-social a principle, I must now proceed to 
the proof of my proposition, which is to be found in 
their law ; and I assert that in that volume, which 
by common consent is held to contain, not merely 
the maxim but the injunction of propagating reli- 
gion by the sword, there is not one line at variance 
with the common instincts of humanity, or with the 
law of nations, as laid down by our first writers, 
however disregarded in our present practice. I 
might content myself with this declaration, and 
throw upon my antagonists the burden of disproof ; 
I might ask them to produce their counter- autho- 
rities, and as they can produce not one, the case is 
closed. But I will go further. I will disprove them 
out of their own mouths. I select their highest 
authority, Sale. He says : — 

" Under the head of Civil Laws may be comprehended the 
injunction of warring against Infidels, which is repeated in 
several passages of the Koran, and declared to be of high 
merit in the sight of God : those who are slain, fighting in 
defence of the faith, being reckoned martyrs, and promised 
immediate admission to Paradise." 

Will it be believed that there is not a single 
passage in the Koran to justify this assertion ? He 
refers, in a foot-note, to a variety of texts : there is 
not one of those texts which does not controvert 



WAS NOT PROPAGATED BY THE SWORD. 163 

him, as will be seen presently when I cite them from 
his own translation. He was misled by the expres- 
sion, " Fight for religion," which is constantly used, 
and which, as I haye above shown, implies the same 
as with us would be implied by the words, " Fight 
for your rights," " Fight for your country." * Sale 
being considered a partisan of the Mussulmans, his 
opinion has been considered conclusive ; and who 
would venture to question a maxim for which a score 
of references are given to the Koran itself? and 
these words of Mahomet, applied to his small band 
of persecuted followers, to encourage them to resist 
attack, are received to-day as a command laid on 
150,000,000 of men to assail all other creeds. Now, 
here are the passages referred to in the note : — 

" And fight for the religion of God against those who fight 
against you ; but transgress not by attacking them first : for 
God loveth not the transgressors." — Koran, chap. ii. 

" If they (the true believers) ask assistance of you on ac- 
count of religion, it belongeth unto you to give them assist- 
ance ; except against a people between whom and yourselves 
there shall be a league subsisting ; and God seeth that which 
ye do." — Chap. viii. 

" God hath purchased of the true believers their souls 
and their substance ; promising them the enjoyment of Para- 
dise, on condition that they fight for the cause of God. 
Whether they slay or be slain, the promise is assuredly due 
by the Law (of Moses), the Gospel, and the Koran." — Chap. ix. 

But who are the unbelievers ? those " who have 
* See note at the end of the Essay. 



164 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

violated their oaths." . . . "Will ye not fight 
against those who have violated their oaths, and 
have conspired to expel the Apostle of Gfod, and who 
of their own accord assaulted you?" Sale adds the 
following note : — " As indeed the Koreish, in as- 
sisting the tribe of Beer against those of Kozaah, 
had laid a design to ruin Mahomet without any just 
provocation." * 

" If Grod did not repel the violence of some men 
"by others, verily monasteries, and churches, and 
synagogues, and the temples of the Moslems, 
wherein the name of Grod is frequently comme- 
morated, would be entirely demolished." Sale's 
note to this passage is : — 

" This was the first passage of the Koran which allowed 
Mahomet and his followers to defend themselves against their 
enemies by force, and was revealed a little before the flight 
to Medina; till which time the Prophet had exhorted his 
Moslems to suffer the injuries offered them with patience : 
which is also commanded in above seventy different places of 
the Koran." + 

I need not multiply instances. 

What a contrast have we not here with the 
then practice of the world, and even with its 
maxims ! At the period of Mahomet's rise, a state 
of public law, if the term can be so used, had been 
superinduced by the connexion of the schisms of the 

* Chap. ix. f Chap. xxii. 



IT ESTABLISHED PUBLIC LAW. 165 

Eastern Church with state policy, whether as re- 
gards internal revolution or conflict with Persia, 
similar to that which arose out of the Reformation, 
when a difference of religion became, on the one side, 
the basis of an alliance, and on the other, grounds 
of war. Amongst us the rectification took place 
through the labours of jurisconsults, in which the 
Jesuit Suarez and the Reformer Grotius took the 
lead ; and gradually Europe was brought back to see 
that rights were not contingent upon faith. It was 
the founder of a new religion, himself chief of the 
state and leader of its armies, who, in the seventh 
century, proclaimed this truth, and specially asserted 
it for the benefit of the professors of other faiths. 
Islam may, therefore, be said to owe its extension to 
its assertion of international law. 

As to the systems from which Mahomet copied, 
of course he found in Christianity the purest and 
most benevolent of maxims ; but he was liable to 
interpret the Grospel by the acts of its followers, or 
would have been so, had he not been gifted with 
that intuitive perception of the means of influencing 
mankind which involves all practically important 
truths. The same thing may be said in reference to 
the religion of Jemshid, known by the name of its 
reformer, Zoroaster ; for the majesty of its ancient 
principles had likewise been obscured. The third 



166 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

system, however, Judaism, did give a religious sanc- 
tion to aggression ; not with a view of conversion, but 
of extirpation. The Jews were cursed for sparing. 
Mahomet quotes both Moses and David to justify 
war, but applies the example to defensive ones. 

But we must look at conduct as well as maxims.* 
Perchance in this case, as in many others, the one 
may belie the other. The first wars of Mahomet in 
Arabia were defensive. The war with the Greek 
Empire arose out of the assassination of an envoy. 
The career once entered upon, they were placed in 
just warfare with the whole of the then world. It 
was impossible that aggressive war should not take 
place ; but I confine myself to the original code, and 
the early period by which its character was formed 
and its principles fixed. The spirit of aggression 
never breathed itself into that code which formally 
incorporated the law of nations as a portion of the 
faith, and the Mussulmans, in the hour of triumph, 
were always ready to say, "Accept our faith, and 
you will cease to be even tributary; you will enter 
into full fellowship with the conquering people." It 
is this, which was a generosity then undreamt of, 
which became the ground of the charge in practice 
of propagating religion by the sword. As these 

* See note at the end of the Essay. 



CAPTURE OF TYRE. 167 

charges rest principally upon the events of the first 
and great war — that of Syria, I cannot avoid refer- 
ring to them, as given by Alwakidi, vehemently dis- 
posed to make every war a religious one, and every 
victory a sign from Heaven. Here is the instruction 
of the Caliph on the first foreign expedition : — 

" When you make any covenant or article stand to it, and 
be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some 
religious persons that live retired in monasteries, who propose 
to themselves to serve God in that way." 

The following is the account of the eapture of 
Tyre : — " Youkinna, the governor of Aleppo, had 
turned Mussulman, and had introduced himself into 
Tyre with 900 followers, also converts to Islam. 
His design and character being discovered, he and 
his men, on the approach of a Saracen force, against 
whom the governor had sallied forth, were confined 
in the Castle. A Christian named Basil, holding 
some place of trust in the Castle, released these 
men while the two armies were engaged without the 
walls." 

" This Basil, upon information of the great success of the 
followers of the Prophet, was abundantly convinced of the 
truth of his mission. This inclined him, having so fair an 
opportunity offered, to release Youkinna and his men. who, 
sending word to the ships, the rest of their forces landed and 
joined them. In the mean time, a messenger in disguise was 
sent to acquaint Yezid (the Saracen leader) with what was 



168 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

done. As soon as lie returned, Youkinna was for falling upon the 
townsmen upon the wall ; but Basil said, perhaps God might 
lead some of them into the right way, and persuaded him rather 
to place the men so that their coming down from the wall 
might be prevented. This done, they cried out, i La illahe ! ' &c. 
The people perceiving themselves betrayed, and the prisoners 
at liberty, were in the utmost confusion ; none of them being 
able to stir a step, or lift up a hand. Those in the camp 
hearing a noise in the city, knew what was the occasion of it, 
and Youkinna opened the gates and let them in. Those that 
were in the city fled, some one way and some another, and 
were pursued by the Saracens and put to the sword. Those 
upon the wall cried quarter. Yezid told them, that since the 
city was taken by force they were all slaves. ' However,' said 
he, 'we, of our own accord, set you free, upon condition you pay 
tribute ; and if any of you has a mind to change his religion 
he shall fare as well as we do? The greatest part of them 
turned Mahometans." 

" When Constantine heard of the loss of Tripoli and Tyre 
his heart failed him ; and, taking shipping with his family and 
wealth, he departed for Constantinople. All this while Amrou 
Ebn ul Aas lay before Csesarea. In the morning, when the people 
came to inquire after Constantine, and could hear no tidings 
of him nor his family, they advised together, and with one 
consent surrendered the city to Amrou ; paying down for their 
security 2000 pieces of silver, and delivering into his hands 
whatsoever belonged to Constantine that he had not carried 
away with him. Thus was Csesarea lost in the 17th year of 
the Hejrah, and the fifth of Omar's reign ; upon which those 
other places in Syria which as yet held out, namely, Eamlah, 
Accah, Joppa, Ascalon, Gaza,Sichem (or Nabolos),and Tiberias, 
surrendered ; and in a little time after the people of Beirout, 
Sidon, Jabalah, and Laodicea, followed their example : so that 
there remained nothing more to be done in Syria, but all 
was entirely subdued by the Saracens, who had not spent 



ITS ESTABLISHMENT IN PERSIA. 169 

above six years in subduing that large, wealthy, and populous 
country." * 

From Syria the arms of the Arabs were turned 
against Persia, and the deputies of Omar offered to 
Yesdegird terms by which war might be avoided — 
the profession of Islam and the reform of political 
abuses ; all taxes to be reduced, save the tenths, and 
2 1 per cent of every man's means for the poor, the 
distribution of which was left to himself; justice to 
be administered by the code of Mahomet ; and all 
men, without distinction of grade or office, to be sub- 
ject to it. Such terms did no more agree with the 
dispositions of Yesdegird than with those of any 
other monarch ; and he, his nobles, and the chiefs of 
the priesthood, were cut off in the desperate stand 
they made amidst millions of indifferent subjects, f 

The communication made by the Saracen General 
to the Governor of Egypt is also equally decisive : — 

" Abadah (the emissary of Amr) coming into Makouka's 
presence, he bade him sit down, and asked him what they 
(meaning the Arabs) meant, and what they would have. 
Abadah gave them the same answer as the Saracens always 
used to do, to all that asked them that question ; telling him 
that he had three things to propose to him by the command 
of Amr, who had received the same order from his master, 
Omar the Caliph, viz. that they should either change their 



* Ockley's " History of the Saracens." 

f Price's " Eetrospect of Mahometanism," vol i. p. 105. 



170 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

religion and become Mahometans, and so have a right and 
title to all privileges in common with them, or else pay per- 
petual tribute yearly, and so come under their protection ; or 
else they must fight it out, till the sword decided the contro- 
versy (not of faith, but dominion) between them." 

On this Ockley remarks: — " These, as we have 
observed before, were the conditions which they pro- 
posed to all the people where they came ; the propa- 
gating their religion being to them a just occasion 
of making war upon any nation whatsoever.' ' 

The propagating their religion could not have 
been the occasion of their making war, as it was not 
the object of the war, nor the consequence of tri- 
umph. Ockley's supposition would be incorrect, even 
if they had proposed conversion or tribute, for they 
were already at war with the empire to which Egypt 
belonged. 

A spirit the very reverse of this is evinced in 
every page of the history of Islam, in every country 
to which it has extended ; so that in Palestine a 
Christian poet* has exclaimed, twelve centuries after 
the events to which we are referring, — " The Ma- 
hometans are the only tolerant people on the face of 
the earth;" and an English traveller f reproaches 
them with being too tolerant. 

The results produced by Islam seem too vast, too 

* Lamartine. f Slade. 



ITS RESULTS. 171 

profound, too permanent, to allow us to believe that 
the human mind could anticipate them, far less ad- 
just the scheme ; thence the disposition to take re- 
fuge in chance, or providential design, instead of 
applying to it the process of reasoning, by which we 
estimate the effects of the laws of Solon, or the 
triumphs of Timoleon. Nevertheless, this scheme 
was framed by a single man, who filled with his own 
spirit those who were in immediate contact with him, 
and impressed a whole people with the profoundest 
veneration of which man ever was the object. The 
system of laws and morals which he formed agreed 
equally with the highest development as with the 
lowest level of society, which, during ten centuries, 
passing from race to race, made every people by whom 
it was received superior to, and triumphant over, the 
nations and empires with which they came in contact. 
By the same process that Islam subdued Arabian 
idolatry, so did it subdue fire-worship. After con- 
quering the Arabs it conquered the Persian Turks, 
Mongol Tartars, Berebers, and a large portion of 
the Greek and other populations. At this day that 
faith is spread where the hostile banners of its pro- 
fessors never flew. Missionary labours have ex- 
tended it to the eastern confines of India. Moor- 
croft found it in Ladak, triumphing over Buddhism ; 
and the Landers found it on the banks of the Niger, 



172 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

putting an end to human sacrifice, where its sway is 
established with regal pomp and despotic power. 
!No one ever heard of inquisition into man's faith, 
or conversion by force ; and where the title of High 
Priest and Successor of Mahomet is placed above that 
of emperor and of king, no follower of a different 
creed contributes from his substance to the mainte- 
nance of the Church. Whilst Turkey was an aggres- 
sive power, it might have been politic in the nations 
she attacked to raise the cry of religion, but as 
against an unaggressive state it is as insane as it is 
immoral. The present fomentation of revolt amongst 
its Christian subjects is undertaken out of the same 
regard for the propagation of Christianity as the 
fomentation of internal discord, or the military sur- 
vey of the frontiers of India for the propagation of 
Islam — for the dupes in the one case are the victims 
in the other. 

To the mind of the Mussulman, no idea of anti- 
thesis is conveyed by the designation of his faith 
with that of Moses or of Christ. He holds these to 
be stages of progression, and thence the expression, 
" A Jew must become a Christian before he can be a 
Mussulman.' ' He calls Abraham and the Patriarchs 
Mussulmans. He says all men are born Mussul- 
mans. Islam means " resignation." They do not 
call us Christians, but followers of Hazret Isa, the 



EXECUTION OF A RE VILER OF JESUS CHRIST. 173 

blessed Jesus ; the reviling of whom is blasphemy, 
and is punished with death. 

In the time of Mahomed IV., a Christian priest 
had made profession of Islam, and, to prove his zeal, 
reviled our Saviour, applying to him the epithet 
" impostor," which he had been accustomed to apply 
to Mahomet. The Mussulmans, shocked at the out- 
rage, carried him before the Divan, and he was 
ordered for immediate execution.* 

This chapter having been translated to a party 
of Mussulman doctors at Constantinople, one of 
them inquired, at its conclusion, why I had taken 
so much trouble to write down these things. I ex- 
plained what were the prevailing ideas in Europe. 
He then retorted, " In that case you have not said 
half enough/' and said that I should refer to every 
war which had occurred during the last 150 years, 
every one of which had arisen out of the religious 
animosity of Christians. "When," said he, "has 
Turkey violated a treaty, or undertaken a war, save 
in self-defence ? And what, on the other hand, has 

* " Mahomet was the wilful prey of his own unbridled pas- 
sions ; Christ, the perfect pattern of all virtue. The only compari- 
son open to us is one of contrast, and the only appropriate contrast, 
that between ' the swine wallowing in the mire and the Lamb 
without blemish and without spot.'" — Forster, vol. ii. p. 479. 

This from a " Christian philosopher;" what might be expected 
from an illiterate monk ? 



174 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

been the conduct pursued towards us ? The viola- 
tion of every moral and religious feeling ; not only 
treaties violated, and aggressive and unjust wars un- 
dertaken, but treaties falsely interpreted, and the 
agents of all powers, and even our own, turned 
against us. Then, our subjects, urged to insurrec- 
tion on the grounds of religion, and ourselves 
attacked by the three greatest powers of Europe, in 
profound peace. Now you accuse us of being the 
aggressors, and attribute to our religion the hostility 
of yours. After the battle of Navarino, what was it 
that saved your lives and your property but our 
respect for the precepts of our religion ? Ask the 
Greek inhabitants of Arnout-Keuy to whom they 
owed their salvation from inevitable destruction ?" 
I inquired, What were the circumstances to which he 
alluded? He told me, that on the breaking out of 
the Greek revolution some thousand Asiatic troops 
were embarked at Constantinople, to be sent to 
Galatz, but the wind proving unfavourable, the 
vessels cast anchor in the Bosphorus, at that village. 
Infuriated against the Greeks, these troops deter- 
mined on burning the village, which was exclusively 
inhabited by Greeks. They were on the point of 
carrying their design into execution, when the 
Greeks sent information of it to one of the body 
of the Ulema, who resided in the neighbourhood. 



THE ULEMA PROTECT SOME GREEKS. 175 

He immediately assembled as many of the Ulema 
as were within reach, and as no time was to be 
lost, they hastened to the beach, carrying with them 
all the money they could collect. " What," said my 
informant, " were the arguments they used ? Were 
they not the words of the Prophet ? and why did 
they venture themselves on so perilous a service, 
but because they were his servants and the guardians 
of the honour of the Mussulmans ?"* "But," said 
he, "so strongly impressed on every true Mussul- 
man is the obligation of having right on his side 
before he has recourse to arms, that if the Rus- 
sian fleet were to sail down the Bosphorus not a 
gun would be fired until the signal for hostilities 
was given by the invaders themselves. Ask the 
Russians if they have not, at the commencement of 
every war, taken cruel advantage of this conscien- 
tiousness on our part, even when dealing with men 
who have never used to us the words i faith' or 
{ honour' but for purposes of fraud and deceit?" 

The foregoing pages were returned to me by a 
friend, to whom I had submitted them, with this 
remark, — " This is all very well, and I will take your 
word for it, but this is only one half of the question ; 
let me now see the defects of Mahometanism ; for like 
the moon, its emblem, it must have its dark side." 

* This fact has been confirmed to me by the inhabitants of 
Arnout-Keuy. 



176 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

I confess I was startled with the observation, 
because I had only been struck with the good parts, 
and had only thought of these. I had at the time 
to deliver myself from a most inveterate censure, an 
implacable hatred ; and consequently, as I gradually 
came to admit what was good, I dropped my own 
previous opinions as to the bad : and in fact, in all 
inquiries, it is the good alone that links on, connects 
thought, or strikes root. In this case, moreover, it 
was the branch of the subject which presented 
novelty. But, desirous to yield to my friend's 
wishes, I looked up the subject in travellers' and 
other books, and made a catalogue of the evils of 
Islam. I found to my surprise, that there was not 
one of these which I could not show to be a mis- 
prision, or a calumny. Of course it will be under- 
stood that I am speaking of it as a political system, 
and considering it simply as a code of laws. I 
set down face to face the allegations, with my 
remarks : — 

1. Imposture in With this I have nothing to 
Beligion. do. 

2. Sensual Pa- This is also a religious point ; 
radise. but it is to be observed that the 

descriptions of the Koran are 
spiritually explained and under- 
stood, as is by us the Song of 
Solomon. 



CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST IT. 



177 



3. No Souls al- 
lowed to Women. 

4. Sensuality. 



5. Eeligious 
Schism. 



6. Extension of 
Religion by the 
Sword. 

7. Persecution 
of other Creeds. 

8. Intolerance. 



An ignorant mistake.* 

They bring that charge 
against us. Napoleon observes 
that Mahomet was the only 
Eastern legislator who restricted 
the number of legitimate wives. 
I refer the reader on this head 
to the chapter entitled " The 
Life of the Harem," in " The 
Spirit of the East." 

The schisms of Islam are not 
doctrinal; not even that be- 
tween the Sunnys and the 
Shiahs.f It is remarked by 
Sylvester de Sacy, in his "His- 
tory of the Druses/' that the 
early spirit of Mahometanism 
was devotional, but not doc- 
trinal. The metaphysical spirit 
was a subsequent importation 
from the Greeks and Persians. 

A mistake. 



Ditto. 



The reverse of the truth. 



* See note at the end of the Essay. 



f Ibid. 

N 



178 



ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 



9. Enmity to 
Science and 
Letters. 



10. Burning of 

the Library of 



Islam has outstripped the 
enlightenment of our age by 
making instruction a funda- 
mental law.* Every child must 
be put to school in its fifth 
year. It is the duty of the 
state to instruct the citizen, 
that he may understand the 
laws he has to obey, and of the 
family to teach the child the 
means by which he may ac- 
quire his livelihood. Every 
Sultan is instructed in a handi- 
craft, and some of them have 
earned thereby their subsist- 
ence. There have been, how- 
ever, no educational heart- 
burnings, because each com- 
munity had to teach its child- 
ren for and by itself. It was 
from the Mussulmans that 
Europe received science and 
letters. 

This event, however it may 
have occurred, f was followed 



* At Constantinople, when a quarter is burned down, the inha- 
bitants are obliged to rebuild the school, but the mosque is not 
rebuilt until provided for by its own endowments, or by some pious 
person. — Note of Editor. 

f It is most doubtful that this event ever did occur, since it is 
not related by contemporary Arab historians, and the wilful burning 



CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST IT. 



179 



Alexandria. 



11. Punishing 
of Apostates with 
Death. 



seventy years after by the reign 
of Mostassem Billah ; and if 
the event is a charge, that reign 
might be a redemption. Speak- 
ing of it with Mustafa Pasha, 
of Skodra, he said, " It was a 
crime of self-defence ; the faith 
was young." The present Mus- 
sulmans, indeed, say, all science 
is to be found in the Koran, but 
they did not burn Ulug Beg. 
The present scientific darkness 
of the East has as much to do 
with Islam as that of the 
eleventh century in the West 
with Christianity. 

I am not going to defend 
this law, but I nevertheless 
enumerate it in the list of 
unjust charges, for it is one 
which Christians have no right 
to make, and which, in a prac- 
tical point of view, is utterly 
insignificant. If we are con- 



of a library would have been contrary to the precept of Maho- 
med, — "Seek for science, even though it be in China;" and the 
saying of Abu Hanifah, — " Thank the Greeks for paper, for which 
you are indebted to them." However, the burning of all the Arab 
works on history, medicine, and agriculture, by Cardinal Ximenes, 
on the ground that they were Alkorans, is historical. — Note of 
Editor. 



180 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

11. Punishing trasting two systems of long 
of Apostates with duration, to judge of their cha- 
Death. racter from their conduct, we 

must not take the opinions of a 
certain period of the one as the 
test by which we shall rate the 
whole course of the other. Let 
us go back three centuries, when 
rival fires were being lighted 
by Christians to burn the bodies 
of other Christians, and who 
would have dreamt of bringing 
this law as a charge against 
Islam? I have already said that 
religion includes country, con- 
sequently this law is the law of 
treason. As to its abolition 
having any effect in influencing 
religious opinion, I utterly deny 
it. If there was a disposition 
towards conversion, it would be 
thereby increased, and almost 
without exception ; the in- 
stances, rare as they are, of its 
application, have been those of 
Christians who first apostatised 
and then relapsed. However, 
this law, by what I must call a 
most cowardly, as well as ill- 
judged, violence on the part of 



CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST IT. 181 

11. Punishing the British Embassy, has been 
of Apostates with now, so to say, superseded. "We 
Death. will see whether conversions 

will be the result. Any one ac- 
quainted with the people will be 
of a very different opinion. It 
opens the door to apostasy, be- 
cause it withdraws that which 
has been hitherto the great ob- 
stacle, the impossibility of re- 
turning thereafter to their ori- 
ginal faith. Death is very 
different for a Mussulman and 
for a Christian. Besides, the 
tide of conversion is running 
the other way. No one has 
ever heard of a Mussulman be- 
coming a Christian, but mil- 
lions of Christians throughout 
the Ottoman Empire have, in 
the course of the last century 
and a-half, become Mussulmans. 

12. Separation This, like the former, is in- 
of the Sexes. defensible in itself. That wo- 
men should veil up their faces, 
and be separated in society 
from men, no natural law com- 
mands, and no necessity will 
justify ; but if we estimate 
an institution by its effects, 



182 



ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 



12. Separation 
of the Sexes. 



13. Slavery. 



14. Immutabi- 



tliat is to say, if we compare 
its effects with, those of other 
institutions, I do not think 
that we shall have grounds for 
condemning this one. I believe 
that in the East domestic hap- 
piness is realised in a greater 
degree than in Europe : at all 
events, there is no compul- 
sion. The people like their 
way of life, and compulsion 
would be required to alter it. 
This, however, like the former 
point, was not a new law intro- 
duced by Mahomet, but an in- 
stitution existing from the ear- 
liest times. 

Again a mistake, resulting 
from the false application of 
our own terms. When an anti- 
slavery despatch was sent to 
Lord Ponsonby, he refused to 
communicate it to the Turkish 
Government, and in his reply 
asked with what face he could 
deplore the miserable condition 
of the slave to a Reis Effendi or 
a Grand Yizier, who was him- 
self a slave. 

This is an opinion, and not a 



CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST IT. 



183 



lity of Law ar- 
resting Progress. 



15. Yenality of 

Judges. 



charge. There are those, even 
amongst ourselves, who side 
with the Mussulmans. The 
value of this objection, says 
Richardson, regarding the In- 
stitutes of Menu, depends upon 
the character of the law, and' 
it is clear that laws that are 
not good cannot be immutable. 
It is clearly as desirable to 
keep good laws as to change 
bad ones, and so in fact we 
may both be right. In any 
system where the laws are im- 
mutable there must be sim- 
plicity in the machinery, and 
facility of the adaptation to 
practice ; as, on the other hand, 
where the principle of change is 
admitted, the best of laws must 
lose half their value. It will 
scarcely be denied that amongst 
us legislation is but the tool of 
party, and the expression of the 
despotism of a temporary majo- 
rity with the effect of compli- 
cation and multiplicity, which 
imply badness of law. 

Throughout the history of 
Islam this has been the great 



184 



ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 



15. Venality of 
Judges. 



16. Despotism. 






cause of commotion and the 
butt of satire ; yet, perhaps in 
no country is less injury suf- 
fered from legal proceedings. 
There are no lawyers ; proceed- 
ings are immediately brought 
to a close. Judicial authority 
is, moreover, recognised in all 
municipal and elective officers ; 
all corporations, religious com- 
munities and commercial guilds, 
administer justice through their 
own officers, without interfer- 
ence from the tribunal; their 
civil awards are enforced by 
their own authority; their penal 
decision (death excepted) by 
the Turkish authorities. 

Turkey is the only govern- 
ment in the world which is 
not struggling with its people 
to wrench from them their pri- 
vileges. It is, on the contrary, 
engaged in an attempt to confer 
them. A Sultan can impose 
no tax, make no law, declare 
no war, contract no debt. If 
the constitution of Islam were 
translated and applied to any 
country in Europe, it would be 



CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST IT. 185 

16. Despotism. considered a beautiful, but im- 

practicable, theory of Utopian 
freedom. 

17. Abuses of This, it will be observed, is 
Administration. a practical, and not a theoretic 

point.* The Turks established 
themselves by conquest, which 
exposes a people and a system 
to temptations which almost 
inevitably end by its ruin. Two 
questions then arise : first, whe- 
ther the abuses have their root 
in the system ? the second, whe- 
ther they be capable of remedy ? 
I answer negatively to the first, 
and affirmatively to the second ; 
and I but repeat the opinion, 
and, at that time, the prophecy 
of the first authority on the 
subject, D ? Ohsson,f who at the 
very darkest period of Turkish 
history asserted that those 
abuses were capable of easy 
rectification, because not in the 
system, and because they were 
violations of positive canon law. 

* See note at the end of the Essay. 

f " Tous les maux politiques qui affligent les peuples Musul- 
mans derivent de leurs prejuges, de leurs fausses opinions, des 
vices du gouvernement, mais non des vrais principes de la religion 
et de la loi." — Mouradgia D'Ohsson. 



186 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

18. Fatalism. I know not now to answer 

a charge conveyed by a word 
which has no meaning. They 
do not believe in Fate, and 
cannot, therefore, believe in an 
abstraction of Fate. They do 
assert man's free-will ; they 
hold him responsible for his 
acts before God and man ; they 
do not believe only, but trust 
in Providence. Their disposi- 
tions differ from ours in many 
respects, but not as the result 
of vain speculation. They are 
content when they have no 
grounds for being dissatisfied, 
and are, consequently, inert 
where Europeans would be 
busy. They are resigned to 
the decrees of Providence, and, 
consequently, quiet where the 
European would be dissatisfied. 
They do not believe in the con- 
tagion of the plague, and, con- 
sequently, attend the sick-bed 
of a relative when a European 
would be touching him with a 
pair of tongs, or flying into 
the country. And they are in 
the habit of saying on all oc- 



CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST IT. 187 

18. Fatalism. casions " God is great/' and so 
leaving the morrow to take 
care of itself. A Turk could 
not deny that he was a fatalist, 
for the best of reasons — that 
he has no such extravagance in 
his brain, or such a term in 
his language. 

Such is the catalogue of evils, as I find them in 
European writers. I may be considered partial in 
this statement, yet no one has the experience of the 
evils of Turkey that I have had, because my work in 
that country has consisted in a struggle for their 
rectification. My support in this has been always 
the Koran, and in so far as I have succeeded, it has 
been from this cause. If I have spoken commenda- 
torily of them, it is not to themselves. With them, 
the theme has ever been their wrongful judgments 
and abusive acts ; but so conscious are they of their 
own departure in this respect from the original type, 
that instead of being looked on, in consequence, as 
an enemy of Islam, my crusade, if I may so call it, 
has gained me the designation of " Threefold Mus- 
sulman. " However, other Europeans have come to 
the same conclusion. I have already stated that of 
D'Ohsson ; I will add that of a powerful French 
writer who had every opportunity of knowing them, — 



188 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

"Islam is neither the enemy of progress nor the 
friend of violence and abuse." 

This search after faults has led me to the obser- 
vation of two points, in which Islam is superior to 
all other systems. The decrepitude of all beliefs is 
the putting the creature in the place of the Creator. 
Islam is old enough to have experienced this change ; 
yet alone has it remained free from idolatry and 
superstition. In regard to the second point, the 
contrast is rather with Christianity than with Bud- 
dhism or Brahmin ism ; it has reference to inter- 
national law ; it deals with the acts of the com- 
munity, as our courts of justice with the acts of the 
individual. No doubt the Christian religion, and 
more specifically the Old Testament, forbids alike 
crime in the community and crime in the individual ; 
but Christianity established no court for the enforce- 
ment of that law ; and having gradually emerged 
from a condition of obscurity and persecution,, there 
was never formed a system of administration which, 
so to say, should apply and implement the faith. It 
is true that the Church exerted itself to control, 
through the consciences of men, the lawlessness of 
princes and the passions of people ; and we find 
it interposing, denouncing, and excommunicating, 
with the effect of diminishing the frequency, miti- 
gating the savageness, and limiting the duration of 



IT DEALS WITH THE COMMUNITY. 189 

wars, and thus establishing a rule and code of right 
and honour, out of which came the chivalry of the 
middle ages, which is of scholastic and monastic 
parentage. But in all this the Church was an oppo- 
sition, not an institution — a petitioner for justice 
rather than the judge dispensing it from the bench. 
The feebleness of this organisation is exhibited at 
later times, when the Church was reformed ; when, 
instead of supplying the fundamental deficiency, or 
strengthening the power it still retained, the Refor- 
mation purposely ruptured the connexion between 
the Church and the aggregate conscience, saying to 
it, " You shall be spiritual only; you shall be little 
children, and yet preach to grown-up men ; but all 
that regards justice and judgment, that is, ' policy,' 
is no matter of yours." In the end it has happened, 
that the nations of Christendom have lost and en- 
tirely forgotten, to the very tradition, the meaning 
of war, beyond the mere material facts connected with 
it ; so that the perpetration of a national murder, 
entailing the loss of tens or hundreds of thousands 
of lives on the parts of those whom we assail, or in 
retribution for our own act, can be effected without 
so much as the formalities requisite for cutting a 
road or building a bridge. Justice in its highest 
sense has disappeared from Christendom; with it, 
Religion, in its social and binding power ; and it 



190 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

would require a very fine distinction — so very fine 
that I am unable to perceive it — to admit of the 
possibility of the existence of faith, in the abstract 
sense, amongst a people on whom judicial blind- 
ness has fallen. A man who has committed a mur- 
der may be a Christian, but no one will say that that 
man is a Christian who is ready daily to commit 
murder. There is no difference in regard to mo- 
rality between a collective and an individual murder ; 
and if a community continues to remain aware, in its 
private dealings, of the distinction between murder 
and self-defence, while it has lost that perception as 
regards its aggregate acts, surely that people is blind 
in respect to justice and to judgment ; and, so far 
from being the repositories of the truth and the 
faith, it is to them that religion has to be preached : 
and happy would it be if they could be converted, I 
will not say to Christianity, but to any religion 
whatever. 

Dr. Groodall, the now venerable head of the 
American Missionaries in the East, once addressed, 
in my hearing, some young fellow-labourers, who 
had just arrived from the other side of the Atlantic, 
and one of whom had just preached to us a sermon, 
fervid with prophecy and proselytism, in these terms, 
— " My dear young friends, you have come here to 
see practised those virtues we hear of in Christendom." 



IT DEALS WITH THE COMMUNITY. 191 

Before then, it had occurred to myself that the 
nations of Europe required first to become Mussul- 
mans before they really could be Christians ; and in 
fact, the Christian faith is Oriental, and though the 
faith be circumscribed to no region, yet its manners 
and habits are not those of the West. The two social 
features with which we are acquainted are private 
charity and international justice. It is to the 
method adopted practically to maintain both that I 
attribute more especially the sudden expansion of 
Islam, its permanency, and the preservation to the 
present hour of its early simplicity of mind and 
institutions. I shall now mention the means adopted 
in respect to the latter. 

A special organisation is only intelligible by a 
due appreciation of the relative functions of the 
other portions of a state ; we must, therefore, first 
consider in the Mussulman system the regal prero- 
gative, the executive power, and the popular will. 

The Prince is the mere executor of the law, but 
is not possessed of any portion of legislative power, 
nor of judicial functions. The first he cannot pos- 
sess, because it is not in exercise at all ; the code is 
immutable, and royal ordinances (the Urf ) a mere 
regulation. As to the second, he is regarded in no 
other light than as a private individual ; he is liable 
to pursuit before the courts of justice, and there are 



192 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

sultans who have stood to plead their own cause be- 
fore the tribunal of a cadi. The executive authority 
is in his hands, but it is limited in every respect as 
our governments are in some respects — they are 
most strictly controlled in home matters by Act of 
Parliament. A Mussulman executive is equally 
limited by the law in foreign matters. But the law 
which limits our Governments is a changeable one : 
they are members of the legislative assemblies, and 
dispose of the powers of the monarch in his legisla- 
tive functions ; they dispose equally of the influence 
of Government as of the party which has raised them 
to power in enacting or in abrogating laws ; in ob- 
taining acts of indemnity, or in dispensing even with 
that protection in cases of their violation of positive 
law. A Mussulman Government has no such hold, 
and possesses no such power. 

In the West, the opinion of the people constitutes 
itself a strength and an authority ; its will becomes 
law, and the exercise of that will is called freedom. 
In the East there is no such thing as opinion ; the 
process of teaching of the whole people corresponds 
with that which we give to lawyers, and conse- 
quently, when commotions break out, it is not with 
the view of changing institutions, or introducing 
reforms, but of resisting violence and wrong, and 
maintaining the law: it therefore ends with the 



IT HAS NO PRIESTHOOD. 193 

deposition of a sovereign, or the execution of a 
minister of state ; and so, instead of shaking the 
stability of the throne or of the institutions, serves 
to maintain them. Consequently the abuses of 
Government, even in the worst times, though they 
may prostrate the well-being of a nation, never de- 
stroy its common sense, its just appreciation of 
right and wrong, or its faculty of restoration ; for it 
suffers only from the temporary violence of man, not 
from the disembodied and undying perversions of 
legislation. 

In the centre of an Administration so simple 
and patriarchal, is placed the body into whose hands 
is exclusively remitted the right of judgment on 
such cases as involve the drawing of the sword. It 
is, so to say, the Church to which alone this power 
is intrusted. I use the word "Church," as it is the 
nearest approach which our language affords ; but 
it also includes the " Bench." Islam is without a 
priesthood. The doctors of the law are the doctors 
of divinity, because the law is the Koran : but they 
are not supported by tithes ; their functions are not 
sacerdotal, but judicial ; yet are they a corporation 
by affiliation, succession, cohesion, wealth, dignity, 
connexions, and influence — no less authoritative 
than the Church in England ; with this difference, 
that there is no dissent. Their wealth is derived 



194 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

neither from church property, nor from tithes, nor 
from state pensions. They are supported by judi- 
cial fees on litigated cases, amounting to 2-J per 
cent, and by the revenues of lands appropriated to 
the mosques; in the same manner that, amongst 
the Greeks, lands were attached to the temples. 
This property is, in consequence, discharged from 
taxes to the state, and secure against confiscation ; 
consequently, in the political uncertainty of the 
last two centuries, a large proportion of the property 
of the Ottoman Empire has been placed in this 
condition, a portion of the proceeds being secured to 
the families of the original owners, the remainder 
entering the treasury of the Efkaf Naziry. The 
Christians profit by this allocation even as much as 
the Mussulmans, and at the present moment almost 
the whole of the property of the city of Constanti- 
nople belongs either in this form, or positively by 
having fallen in, to the body of the Ulema, and pays 
no taxes to the state. This body, although con- 
nected with the aristocracy of the land, and filling 
the highest administrative offices, has, nevertheless, 
its roots in the people — resembling, in this respect, 
the Church of Rome. It is looked up to by the 
nation, in times of difficulty and danger, as its pro- 
tector and representative. Every commotion has 
been led by it, and none has succeeded, except 



THE ULEMA. 195 

where it lias pronounced itself decidedly in its 
favour. 

Those who desire to become acquainted with the 
details of its constitution will find them elaborately 
expounded in D'Ohsson ; I confine myself to the 
general outline. 

The chief of the body is the Sheik ul Islam, or 
Grand Mufti. He is nominated by the Sultan, but 
he can only choose one of the three highest func- 
tionaries : these, again, are nominated by the Sultan, 
but under a similar restriction ; and so progressively 
downwards, the Sultan always nominating, but only 
from the eligible persons determined and presented 
by the hierarchal progression of the body itself. 
It finally rests upon the students in the different 
colleges who are raised the first two steps by colle- 
giate degrees. 

The Grand Mufti, the Cazaskiers of Anatoly and 
Roumely, the three Cadis of the first cities, and 
some other dignitaries, form the supreme council of 
Ulema, or learned men. Their ordinary functions 
have reference to their own corporation, but in all 
extraordinary or doubtful occasions they are con- 
sulted by the Government ; they are not invited to 
join the divan, but the case is submitted to them. 
Thus, for instance, before the measures against Me- 
hemet Ali were adopted they were appealed to, and 



196 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

it was on their fetva itself, rehearsed in the firman, 
that he was declared an outlaw, or, according to 
their expression, a " Firmanli." The case is not 
presented to them in the form of documents to exa- 
mine, but as a solicitor prepares a case for submis- 
sion to counsel. It is said, " M. or N. has done so 
and so. Is his act lawful or unlawful; and if so, 
what is the penalty?" This is the form in which 
cases with foreign powers are submitted. 

It may be said that this is a very inadequate 
process for arriving at the truth; that they have 
before them but an ex-parte statement ; and that even 
upon it a purely judicial view will not be taken by 
persons so intimately connected with the Govern- 
ment. These objections are, doubtless, valid; but 
we must consider how much there is gained, cmteris 
paribus, on the other side. The Ulema are not merely 
a body of lawyers, they are a representative one, and 
a popular one ; they will not confine themselves to 
the case as presented by the Government; their 
opinions and habits are distinct from those of the 
Administration ; they are not compromised by its 
anterior steps ; they will, consequently, in a case of 
manifest injustice — and this is the important mat- 
ter — refuse their fetva, and, of course, the Execu- 
tive is at once stopped. Of what importance is it in 
the case of any quarrel to have an uncompromised 



ITS CHECKS ON UNJUST WARS. 197 

friend, even to consult with? and the quarrels of 
nations, even more than those of individuals, arise 
out of intemperance and irritated self-love. What a 
restraint upon a Government to know that, after it 
has made a quarrel, it cannot shelter itself under 
pending negotiations or royal prerogative ! and what 
a support for the morals and the honour of a people 
that it has only to draw the sword upon a judicial 
sentence ! 

But the functions of the Ulema do not cease, in 
case of war, with the rendering of a fetva. So 
soon as the frontiers are crossed a representative of 
the body is sent to the camp, not only to administer 
justice in the army, but to watch and report on the 
proceedings of the general, to prevent his overstep- 
ping the limits of legality, to take cognizance of his 
proceedings with the opposite party, and to sign with 
him armistices or other documents, which, in fact, 
without such signature, have no validity. The rare 
cases in which the Turks have broken faith, have 
arisen out of the ignorance of their enemies of their 
constitution. They have never,, indeed, presented a 
forged treaty to deceive native princes in India, and 
to avoid parliamentary pursuit at home ; but they 
have been guilty of delivering invalid documents, 
as in the case of Rhodes — that is to say, uncounter- 
signed by the representative of the Mufti — and then 



198 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

felt themselves at liberty to violate them. But this 
aberration is the strongest proof of the value of this 
legal restraint, showing that it was exercised to re- 
press the worst passions, and directly connecting with 
the institutions of Islam the high character of honour 
which is never to be found save acting as a mode- 
rator. There is but one instance in which ambition 
induced the Turkish Government to violate an en- 
gagement. The voice of religion was then loudly 
raised against the outrage, and in the subsequent 
triumphant progress of the Ottoman forces through 
Hungary to Yienna, which lay exposed and defence- 
less, when every temptation of easy victory might 
have led on with eagle's flight the unresisted squad- 
rons, the troops, discouraged by the denunciations of 
the Ulemas, and the chiefs paralysed by the same 
cause, exhibited in their insubordination an example 
of respect for the moral dictates of religion which 
is perhaps unparalleled in the military history of 
Europe. The disasters of the campaign, attributed, 
of course, to other sources by biographers of the 
Western heroes, let loose the suppressed indignation 
of the population of Constantinople ; and Maho- 
med IY., after having occupied the throne for more 
than forty years, was sent to the Seven Towers, to 
expiate with his life the resumption of hostilities 
before the expiration of a truce. 



ITS RESPECT FOR TREATIES. 199 

To come to later times : — 

When in 1812, by the intercession of England, 
hostilities were put an end to between Russia and 
Turkey, it became a matter of astonishment to all 
Europe that Turkey should forego the prospect or 
the certainty held out to her by the invasion of 
Napoleon, of obtaining those ends for which she was 
in arms at that very moment, and for retaking from 
Russia the immense tracts of country which Russia 
had possessed herself of during the previous forty 
years. It was a conviction of the manifest interests 
of Turkey on this occasion that probably rendered 
Napoleon indifferent to the negociations of England 
at Constantinople, and which proved successful be- 
yond all belief, in consequence, no doubt, of the 
coincidence of English and Russian intention.* 
Scarcely was the treaty signed, when, as at that 
of Carlovitz, Turkey perceived her error ; but, her 
agent having appended his signature, no represent- 
ations and no advantages could induce her to break 

* That at the moment of such peril Eussia should obtain the 
accessions of territory by the Treaty of Bukarest, that England in 
saving Kussia should not have regulated with some idea of justice, 
or some glimpse of future events, the boundaries between Eussia 
and Turkey, is what might have been incredible, but for the more 
recent experience. It was in the same year (1812) that England 
secretly arranged with Eussia the dismemberment of Denmark, 
Norway being given to Sweden, that Sweden might not, at the 
general peace, reclaim Finland. 



200 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

her faith. "When the news of this treaty reached 
Brussels, Prince Lieven was there in company with 
a German diplomatist (Baron Ompteda), actually a 
representative of a foreign state at the British court. 
On hearing the treaty had been signed, Prince 
Lieven gave vent to his satisfaction in terms so 
strong as to surprise those present. The German 
minister above referred to observed to him that his 
rejoicing was rather premature, as a hundred thou- 
sand treaties could never prevent even a Christian 
state from seizing the moment of the entrance of 
the French on Russian soil for repossessing itself of 
its lost territory ; that, consequently, the treaty 
could only be a feint to deceive the Russians. 
Prince Lieven, in the unguarded exultation of the 
moment, exclaimed, " Little do you know the Turks ; 
the ink of that deed is worth more to us than a 
hundred thousand men."* In proof that the Turk- 
ish Government has always maintained the respect 
for law, still inherent in the breast of its people, 
and that inoffensiveness which at once renders it 
worthy of the esteem of foreign powers and the 
victim of their intrigues, I select a few passages 
from different periods of their history. 

On their first settlement in Europe they restored 
the Morea, after capturing it, to the Byzantine 

* This incident I had from Baron Ompteda. 



ITS RESPECT FOR TREATIES. . 201 

Emperor, as lawful possessor. They retained Thessa- 
lonica only after its capture for the third time, and 
then on the grounds of a correspondence intercepted, 
by which the Emperor had disposed of it to the 
Genoese. At the Treaty of Belgrade, the Grand 
Yizier justified his refusal to assent to a proposition 
of the plenipotentiaries as follows: — " You, mistake 
the nature of the Turkish Government. It is not in 
its power to do things which that of Yienna can do 
of its own pleasure. It has to consult its people, 
and it is guarded by a law which it cannot infringe. 
It partakes of the nature of a republic, and does not 
wield despotic power." 

Sitting with some soldiers at a bivouac fire, one 
of them was recounting how, at the opening of the 
campaign of 1828, the perfidious Muscovites had 
established themselves on the Turkish territory, and 
were pushing their works up to a small fort where 
he was in garrison. On which I asked how they 
could be such fools as not to attack and drive them 
back. He answered, " War had not been declared." 
I laughed. Upon this, he leaped up and ran for his 
musket. I thought he was going to use it against 
me, but he kissed the stock and said, — " God puts 
this in my hand, and I will not use it save with His 
blessing." 

It was a similar feeling which led to the destruc- 



202 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

tion of the Turkish, fleet at Navarino. They might 
have annihilated that of the allies as it entered, but 
they allowed them to take up their positions, waiting 
till they had fired the first shot. 

The classical scholar will no doubt have already 
been reminded of Eome. There the Ulema was the 
Fecial College. The Consuls, the Senate, and the 
People could declare no war ; that matter was re- 
mitted to the Fecials ; and the very negociations with 
a foreign state were remitted to the legal body, which 
drew up the petitio rerum, transmitted the ultimatum, 
and sent their heralds to the capital of the foreign 
state to denounce the war, remaining thirty days on 
the frontier before the ultima ratio was appealed to 
and the legions suffered to cross. They threw open 
the temple of Janus to publish at home the event, so 
that every precaution should precede, every form of 
law accompany, and every publicity declare the 
solemn event. Thus it was that in a Roman the 
characters of soldier and of citizen were combined, 
and that discipline and honour were not divorced. 
Thus is was that the Republic became mistress of the 
world, and that Roman will be a title of honour to 
the latest generations. 

I have contrasted, as antithetical, the legal cha- 
racter of Islam and of the British Constitution. I 
spoke, however, in respect to the last, not of its 



ROMAN AND ENGLISH DECLARATION OF WAR. 203 

ancient principles, but of its present practice. Eng- 
land adopts the law of Rome, and in it the law of 
nations. It has the Fecial code : petitio rerum, 
ultimatum, denunciatio belli, are still terms of her 
jurisprudence, — are still legal documents requisite 
in every such transaction. The Chancellor of Eng- 
land is the great Eecial. The proclamation of war 
is made in Chancery ; it is not a matter settled in a 
Cabinet Council, for England's law knows neither 
Cabinet Council nor Secretary of State. England's 
law knows no more of diplomacy than did the law of 
Rome ; it no more entered into the conceptions of 
the founders of the one State than of the other to 
settle such matters by whispers, to maintain normal 
intrigues amongst other nations, or to suffer them 
amongst themselves. "When a case did arise, then 
was it judicially decided upon at home ; and then 
was an ambassador expedited to the adverse party 
pro hdc vice. 

The founder of experimental philosophy has left 
us, in regard to politics, a legacy which has long 
lain dormant. His rule for the rectification of 
errors in this branch is, — " Stand upon the ancient 
ways." If this had not been the ancient way, what 
discovery so great as its invention ? 

The practical value of the knowledge of other 
people is the rectification of errors or abuses at 



204 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM.' 

home : if we find sound principles and useful 
habits in a system which we despise, and amongst 
a people to whom we consider ourselves superior, 
our pride and prejudice afford additional arguments 
for such an adoption. This motive has influenced 
me in the foregoing sketch. I have hoped that the 
contrast would not be unavailing to open the eyes of 
my countrymen to this fatal perversion of modern 
times, which, if not rectified before it be too late, 
must, according to my judgment, end in the extinc- 
tion of this Empire, after inflicting incalculable woes 
on the human race. 



Notes of the Editor to the foregoing Essay. 



This Essay was written in 1833, and some additions made 
to it in the few succeeding years, so that it has not been 
revised since some twenty years ago. 

Pp. 163 and 166. — From the following extract from Conde's 
" History of the Arabs in Spain," it would appear that Islam was 
offered as an alternative by which war might be avoided. In 963, 
the King Alhakem declared the obligations of the Muslims when 
they go on the jihad, or in maintaining frontiers, in this order of 
the day (given at Toledo) : — " It is the duty of every good 
Muslim to go to the jihad, or war against unbelievers, enemies of 



LAWS OF WAR. 205 

our law : the enemies shall be invited to Islam, except when they, 
as on this occasion, begin the invasion : in the other case it shall 
be proposed to them either to become Muslims or to pay the 
established tribute, which the unbelievers under our government 
have to pay. If in the strife the enemies of our law should not be 
twice as many as the Muslims, the Muslim who should fly from 
battle would be vile, and sins against the law and our honour. 
In entering the enemies' country, kill no women and children, nor 
the old men without strength, nor the monks of secluded lives, 
except if they should do you an injury. Neither kill nor take 
prisoner him to whom you have given a safe-conduct, nor break 
the conditions and agreements made with them. The safe-con- 
duct which any leader has given, let all maintain it ... . The 

leaders shall use their discretion in recompensing those who 
serve with the army, though not fighting men, or though of another 
faith ..... . Let none come to the army or to the frontier who have 

father and mother, without the permission of both of them, unless 
in case of sudden necessity, when the chief duly is to hasten to the 
defence of the land, and at the call of the frontier governors." 
— Chap. 89. 

" Some of the Christians of Galicia solicited the king to 
declare war against other Christians, and many of the Vizirs of 
the Council and frontier governors desired an occasion for a rup- 
ture, knowing that the Christians were carrying on war amongst 
one another: but the King Alhakem answered them with those 
words of God's Book, — ' Be faithful in keeping your agreements, 
for God will require an account of them from you.' " — Chap. 90. 

P. 177. — It is difficult to account for the origin of this mistake ; 
the " Arabian Nights" are full of contradictions of it, and many 
Arabic books on religion end with a statement that they are for the 
benefit of the Muslims and the Muslimahs. Besides, travellers 
must have observed women going to the mosques. 

P. 177. — The differences between the Sunnys and Shiahs are 
almost entirely political and national : what religious differences 
there are between the two rites are not the cause of their hostility. 
The Shiahs are Persians, for there are no Shiahs except in Persia, 



206 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

or where Persians have been. The hatred of the Persians to the 
Khalif Onier, and their habit of cursing his name alone of the 
three Khalifs whom they reject, is a remnant of Gheber feeling, or 
national irritation against the Arab general-in-chief, whose armies 
subdued their country. This national feeling might have died 
out if it had not been revived for political objects by Shah Ismail 
into a national feeling against the Turks. About the year 1200 
Persia was overrun by those Turkish bands, from fear of whom the 
poet Saady " left his home and fled away;" and to this day the 
greater part of the Shah's subjects speak Turkish rather than 
Persian. Shah Ismail saw the progress of the Ottoman Turks, 
and that, on account of the majority of his subjects being Turks, 
Persia was likely to merge into the Ottoman Empire. He there- 
fore set up the Shiah rite as a device to give a Persian nationality 
to the Turks within his frontiers ; and by making religious dis- 
tinctions between them and the other Mussulmans, he prevented 
their looking upon the Ottoman Sultan as the Commander of the 
Faithful. There were rafizys, or rejectors of the first three Khalifs, 
before his time, but they differed less from the other Mussulmans ; 
they were few in number, and have disappeared from places where 
they formerly existed. 

The Shiahs in India are descendants of Persians, and there 
are some others who were brought over to the Mussulman faith 
by Persians. It is hardly necessary to say that there is no schism 
in the four Sunny rites, which are equally orthodox, and only differ 
in the interpretation of small legal points. 

P. 178. — It is surprising that writers should continue to 
charge the Arabs with the destruction of the Library of the 
Ptolemies, when it is well known that it was burned, with its 
four or seven hundred thousand volumes, during a military opera- 
tion of Julius Caesar. It is the more surprising, since Gibbon 
has thrown doubt on the story, on account of its own im- 
probability and the absence of contemporary authority for it, 
either Christian or Mussulman ; and has said that, even " if 
" the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy 
were indeed consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may 
allow with a smile that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of 



THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 207 

mankind.'' The statement that the library was burned by the 
Arabs was never made till 600 years after the khalifate of Omer, 
when the Jacobite Christian, Gregory Abulfaraj of Malatia, revived 
the old story, and transferred it from the time of Julius Csesar to 
that of the Arab conquest. Whilst Abulfaraj, in his history of the 
Sixth Dynasty, speaks less concisely than is usual to him of 
Csesar and Cleopatra, and dwells on her love of science, and on 
the labours of Photinus, the arithmetician and geometrician, who 
adorned the end of the reign of the Ptolemies, he excludes all 
mention of the destruction of the library at that time, in order to 
transfer the story in such a manner as to gratify his feelings 
against the Arabs. He had also a bias in favour of his own sect, 
and mentions other Jacobites ; and in his story of the library seems 
to have been desirous of giving prominence to Johannes Gramma- 
ticus, also a Jacobite, whom he represents as having asked Amr 
Ibn ul As for the books in the Royal Library. Moreover, the 
words attributed to the Khalif Omer only stand upon the authority 
of Abulfaraj, who quotes no testimony in support of them; and 
they seem like a recollection and travesty of the words of Seneca 
with regard to this event. 

" Onerat discentem turba, non instruit : multoque satius est 
pauciste auctoribus tradere quam errare permultos. Quadringenta 

millia librorum Alexandria arserunt Non fait elegantia 

illud aut cura, sed studiosa luxuria Vitiosum est ubique, 

quod nimium est." Csesar only says, — " Eodemque tempore, qua? 
consueverunt navigia per pontes ad incendia onerarium emittere, 
ad molem constituerunt." And further on, — " Regent cohortatus 

ut parceret patriae quae turpissimis incendiis et ruinis de- 

formata esset." This is a case in which it is necessary to " Eender 
to Caesar." 

But supposing* it to be true that the Saracens did burn the 
Alexandrian Library, how can this be made a charge by those who 
evinced no indignation at the burning of the Summer Palace, and 
the far greater loss sustained by that destruction of ancient monu- 
ments and uninterrupted records of the Chinese Empire ? 

P. 178. — ' ( The Arabs showed the same tolerance, or still 



208 ISLAM AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

greater, in the other countries under their rule. They had allowed 
the Sicilians the free exercise of the Christian religion; they 
even permitted them to make public processions." (Johannes de 
Johanne. Codex diplom. Sicilice, quoted by M. Libri.) — Viardot, 
vol. ii. p. 21. 

In how many Protestant countries are Catholic processions 
permitted ? 

Pp. 184 and 186. — That the abuses of administration are capable 
of remedy, has been proved by their having been remedied by 
Sultan Murad IV., in consequence of the memorials addressed to 
him by Kutchy Bey, remonstrating against the abuses of the admin- 
istration, particularly with respect to the disposal of the Timariots 
and Spahiliks to unfit persons, and the great increase of the palace 
officials and servants. The good effect of Sultan Murad's reforms 
lasted for some time. One of Kutchy Bey's maxims in his remon- 
strance against bribery and corruption deserves mention, as being 
in advance of the age, which seems to favour an opposite idea: — 
" Cursed is he that gives as well as he that takes a bribe." As 
most of Kutchy Bey's writings would apply to the present time, 
and might again do good service, they were printed lately as a 
pamphlet, from one of the rare manuscript copies, and are now in 
general circulation at Constantinople. 

The following extract contains an answer to another charge 
frequently made: — " Beprocher a ITslam, a la doctrine de Maho- 
met, la decadence, peut-etre irremediable, ou sont tombees les 
nations qui la pratiquent aujourd'hui, serait une injustice souve- 
raine. La religion d'un peuple n'a pas avec sa puissance poli- 
tique de relation directe, absolue et forcee. Autrement en lisant 
l'histoire des Bomains, il faudrait donner la preference au pagan- 
isme, qui vit s'elever la fortune et la grandeur de Borne, sur le 
Christianisme qui vit sans les empecher sa chute et sa ruine. 
Le Koran, au contraire, a donne l'impulsion des conquetes et de la 
civilisation a des races indolentes, vieillies dans une immobilite 
seculaire, qu'il fallait retremper et rajeunir.'' — Viardot, " Hisioire 
des Arabes d'Espayne." Paris, 1851. Vol. i. p. 49. 



THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

(Written in 1852.) 

Any description of these bodies would no more re- 
present the use to which they are applied, than a 
sketch of the figure of a chess-board convey the in- 
terest of a game. I can only pretend to give the 
naked outlines, from which the utmost benefit that 
can accrue may be the dispelling of some vulgar 
errors, and the indication of some of the obstructions 
presented to Bussia from a quarter which is supposed 
to afford her only facilities and instruments. 

If a Seminole philosopher were detected teaching 
his fellow-countrymen that Louis Napoleon had 
great chance of subjugating the Highlands of Scot- 
land because he was the intimate friend of the Pope, 
who was the head of the Christians, and that the 
Highlanders were the most religious people be- 
longing to that community, he would be but con- 
veying to the Eed Men of the New World a species 

p 



210 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

of instruction very analogous to that which the 
White Men of the Old "World- receive respecting 
Russia, her designs and her instruments. There 
never was a more gross imposition than the repre- 
sentation of the Emperor of Russia as being Head of, 
or even in communion with, the Church of the East. 
The Church — if I can so prostitute the word — of 
Russia stands, in reference to the Church of Con- 
stantinople, as the English Reformation does to the 
Church of Rome ; or would do if, in addition to 
denying the spiritual authority of the Pope, it sub- 
stituted for High Priest, or for God, the King or 
Queen of England for the time being. Supposing 
such to have been the character of the Reformation 
in England, what would have been said of the Queen 
of England interfering to protect the Protestants of 
France ? And supposing that England should, by 
any extraneous circumstances, grasp at the dominion 
of Europe, would not the danger arising from her 
ambition be infinitely greater for the communities of 
Protestants, from whom she would require the sur- 
render of their faith, than for Catholics, from whom 
she could only wrest political supremacy ? 

This hypothesis is the state of the case in re- 
ference to Russia and the Greek Church. The pro- 
position strikes directly at every received opinion. 
I boldly enunciate it, with the view of provoking 



SEPARATION OF GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES. 211 

inquiry and criticism in regard to the proofs I 
shall adduce. I speak with certain and perfect 
knowledge of the dispositions of every Christian 
community in the East, and in what I shall have to 
state I express their sentiments. I do not mean to 
say that such will be the answer they will give to 
a traveller's inquiry, but such they will avow when 
there is no reason for distrust and no opportunity 
for deception. 

The Church of Constantinople separated itself 
from that of Eome under Photius. The metropoli- 
tan church of Kiof, the daughter of Constantinople, 
became the primate and mother of the churches of 
Russia ; but, from the ninth century, Constantinople 
became the Rome of the East, and its spiritual au- 
thority remained undivided. The endeavours of the 
Popes never ceased to reunite Constantinople ; and 
when the Byzantine emperors were endangered by 
the progress of the Turks, they sought, by reconci- 
liation with Rome, to purchase the military support 
of the Western Christians. But the Greeks detested 
the Azymites more than they dreaded the Mussul- 
mans ; and the fall of Constantinople may, in a great 
measure, be referred to these weak endeavours to 
coerce the consciences of the people. The Greeks of 
the present day do not hesitate to acknowledge this 
truth, and even hold the Turkish conquest to have 



212 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

been a special interposition of Providence for the 
maintenance of the true faith. 

At the time that Kiof became the religious metro- 
polis of Russia, it was in like manner the political 
metropolis. The line of its princes was that which 
succeeded ultimately in uniting the dukedoms ; and 
as they proceeded to incorporate and to extend their 
power, their seat was successively transferred to 
Vladimir and Moscow, in the centre of the proper 
Muscovite race. 

The geographical structure of this region facili- 
tates, to a degree unknown and inconceivable else^ 
where, the institution of slavery. Mountains are, in 
our minds, always associated with freedom ; but the 
contrary idea is not connected with plains, because 
the Kirghis and the Bedouin, the freest of tribes, 
live on plains, or wander over steppes : but those 
plains in the centre of which are placed Yladimir 
and Moscow, differ from the others in soil and in 
climate. The wastes of Arabia and the steppes of 
the Kirghis are not fitted for tillage ; they present a 
scanty subsistence for flocks and herds ; there are no 
cities, and no fixed habitations; the people roam 
and circulate rather than dwell ; they are hardy and 
enterprising, and rendered by nature bold and free. 
The products are not such as to render despotism 
profitable, and the children of the soil are not such 



EFFECT OF RUSSIAN SOIL ON ITS PEOPLE. 213 

as to render it possible. A people of tents is a people 
of nature ; institutions are simple, and men sharp- 
witted. They can no more be overreached than over- 
awed by a governing system. 

The plains of Muscovy are a rich alluvial soil ; 
the people is, consequently, essentially agricultural 
and fixed. The dead level of the land is paralleled 
by an equally deadening uniformity of circum- 
stances ; the body is inured to toil, and the mind 
immersed in torpor. The productiveness of the soil 
facilitates the accumulation of riches, and the go- 
verning power is unrestrained in its action by 
physical impediments : insurrection finds no pro- 
tection in mountain gorges — patriotism no im- 
munity in impassable wastes. 

Beyond this there is the long duration of winter ; 
the people, shut up at home, are exposed to the visits 
of the executive force, travelling by snow almost as 
easily as by the railway. For their hybernation, pre- 
paration has to be made by storing the abundant har- 
vest, that ripens with extraordinary rapidity during 
the summer months. The granaries are the pledges of 
the people's fidelity. The Eussians have never known 
the art of secreting grain by burying it in the soil ; 
that unobserved protection of the independence of man 
under all the great systems of antiquity, and in the 
East at present. Thus it is that the plains of Muscovy 



214 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

afford a peculiar and natural basis for the erection 
of despotic power. Of this edifice we have seen the 
plan laid as a diagram, attempted as an experiment, 
and obtained as a result. There, the people have 
neither means of resistance nor opportunity of flight. 
Like the Egyptians under Joseph, they dispose of 
birthright against food on a tacit contract renewed 
every twelvemonth. Elsewhere, the throne of despo- 
tism balances on a sword ; here, it reposes on the 
buttresses of hunger and cold. One support alone re- 
mained to popular rights — the Church. That support 
too vanished, when the centre was transferred to this 
cradle of subjection from amongst the pastoral and pa- 
triarchal tribes of the South, ennobled and humanised 
by association with the friendly horse and the dutiful 
camel. Amongst populations themselves reduced to 
the condition of beasts of burden, and inured to un- 
varying and cheerless toil, servitude must be religious 
no less than political. The Church so transplanted 
has lost its franchises and its rights — its faculty of 
defending the people or itself. In the early con- 
tests between Rome and Constantinople, Kiof had 
endeavoured to escape from the supremacy of either ; 
and in like manner the new Church of Moscow en- 
deavoured to escape from the supremacy of Kiof. 
These dissensions were comparatively insignificant 
whilst the Tartar yoke weighed on the land. The 



SEPARATION OF RUSSIAN CHURCH. 215 

Church was then held in the highest reverence by 
the Grand Dukes, because it was held in respect by 
the Tartars ; and in fact it served as the protection 
of the people, and finally became the chief instru- 
ment for their emancipation. It consequently rose 
to a position of the greatest influence and authority. 
As the power of the Tartars was broken, that of 
the Church took its place, and the Grand Dukes had 
no sooner relieved themselves from the former than 
they applied themselves to undermine the latter ; 
and with this view supported the usurpations of the 
Church of Moscow. 

The first prelate who entitled himself "Metro- 
politan of Moscow'' was Theognost, in 1330, but 
without denying the supremacy of Kiof. In 1462 
the title was first assumed of " Metropolitan of all 
Russia," on the ground that Kiof had a distinct 
metropolitan subject to Lithuania.* Under the 
Grand Duke Basil the Blind, Moscow was erected 
into a Patriarchate, f on the plea that Kiof and Con- 
stantinople had both yielded to Home. J Religious 
dissensions now became embittered, both by these 
internal measures and by the reaction of the feuds 

* Mouravief, " History of the Kussian Church," p. 80. 
f See note at the end of the Essay. 

X Isidore, patriarch of Kiof, had attended the Council of 
Florence. 



216 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

of the East and of Europe, when a new element 
was thrown in, in the form of a translation of the 
Scriptures by the Patriarch Mcon, in which pas- 
sages bearing upon church government were trans- 
lated to suit the purposes of the Court, and became 
the basis of the new system of servile theology. 
The priesthood, not of Kiof only, but of all Russia, 
was indignant ; many refused to use the volume 
or permit it to be used : its adoption was enforced 
by penal laws. This was the first religious persecu- 
tion in Russia, and the recusants holding to the 
old faith against the new interpolations were called 
Starovirtze, or " old believers." 

Shortly afterwards, Ivan the Third, on the cap- 
ture of Casan, took the title of " Czar of all the 
Russias;" a title not of new invention, but of com- 
mon use from the earliest times, and implying a 
sacerdotal no less than a religious supremacy. It 
was under this prince that the seed of the present 
Russia was sown, and, indeed, that the germ ex- 
panded itself. By his marriage with the Princess 
Sophia, and although she had brothers, he assumed to 
be legitimate successor to the empire of Constantino, 
and quartered its arms. She was given to him by 
the Pope, whom he encouraged in the belief of 
effecting a reunion with the Eastern Church. He 
excited Germany by the prospect of the decay of the 



MOSCOW INDEPENDENT OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 217 

Ottoman Power, offering himself as a providential 
instrument for the accomplishment of its destruc- 
tion. By the expulsion of the Golden Horde he 
likewise pretended to the inheritance of the Tartars 
in the East ; and under his successor we find com- 
munications opened with India and China. On the 
fall of Constantinople he gathered in the remnants 
of that State, and pretended to the headship, for 
Russia, of the Christians of the East, presenting her 
to them as their future deliverer. 

Under his successor, Ivan the Fourth, great 
strides were made in the same direction. He ex- 
tended the limits of Russia by the capture of Astra- 
kan and the subjugation of the Nogai Tartars. He 
finally extinguished the rights of the free cities, 
sacking the last of them, Pskof. He reduced the 
nobles to the lowest condition of servitude, and in his 
reign, appropriately designated one of terror, every 
vestige of internal independence was swept away. 

Under Theodore, the deposed Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople, Jeremiah came to Moscow. He lent 
himself to an inauguration of the Patriarch of Mos- 
cow, and declared his independence of that of Con- 
stantinople. This occurred in 1588. Jeremiah re- 
ceived a large sum of money for this service. 

Peter having left this Patriarchate vacant (as, of 
course, to the Czars belonged the filling up of an 



218 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

office they had created), was at last called upon by 
the chief dignitaries of the Church to fill it. It was 
then he rose, and striking his forehead with his fist, 
uttered the memorable words, " It is here that there 
is for you a Master, a Patriarch, and a God." On 
this he himself officiated at the altar. 

Thus by a sacrilege was effected the fusion of 
temporal and spiritual power, and another, Jeremiah, 
patriarch of Constantinople, was found to give to it 
such sanction as the venal adhesion of a displaced 
prelate could afford. These measures affected solely 
the Church of Moscow, which henceforward came to 
be designated as Antichrist by a large proportion of 
the nation that would not conform, including nearly 
the whole of the populations of the south dependent 
on Kiof : the distinction was drawn between the 
Official Church and the True Church. From that 
hour the Russian State contained in its breast an 
immedicable wound ; the knowledge of the sufferings 
endured and the blood shed has, by the system of 
government, been concealed from the eyes of the 
rest of the world : but the facts connected with the 
revolt of Pougatcheff could not be concealed, how- 
ever much its causes may have been misunderstood. 
It was a Starovirtze insurrection, and with the 
slightest conduct on the part of its leader it must 
have upset the throne of the Czars, 



SUPPRESSION OF THE PATRIARCH OF MOSCOW. 219 

The Church property was now confiscated; the 
clergy received pay from the State ; a military 
organisation was given to it ; the priests took army 
rank and received decorations ; and the Holy Synod 
was instituted to discharge functions of the Patriarch 
under the directions of a general officer. Its duties 
were now restricted to the inculcation of abject 
obedience. The Czar, not in his quality of Patriarch, 
but of Prince, was declared the Yicegerent of God 
upon earth ; his name was printed in the same 
form as that of Grod the Father and of Christ, and 
his subjects were taught that virtue and religion 
consisted in the sacrifice of their substance and their 
lives to the fulfilment of his decrees. The oath 
administered to the army was not, as with the rest 
of the world, to obey lawful orders and to defend the 
frontiers, but to obey every order and to extend the 
frontiers. This superstition was not, as in similar 
cases (if there be a similar case) of human corrup- 
tion, engendered by oppression, but based on im- 
posture ; it was proposed and accepted as a means of 
advancing the pretensions put forward by Ivan the 
Third to the succession of Borne in the West, and of 
the Tartars in the East The Eussian Church is not 
Erastian, in the sense of sanctioning acts of govern- 
ment ; it invests the governing power with the 
ecclesiastical attributes, transferring to the chief of 



220 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

the State even those of the Lord of the Universe. 
It does not trouble itself with psychological dispu- 
tations respecting emanations of the Divine Essence 
and its manifestations in the flesh. A Czar is not a 
living Buddha, adored on account of a supposed 
spiritual abstraction; but the Czar, as a monarch, 
and because reigning, is the centre of faith and the 
object of worship ; believed in for what he does, 
worshipped by executing his decrees.* 

This is not the first time that such blasphemy 
has been witnessed. The Assyrian monarchs so 
seated themselves upon the altar, and required the 
prostrate nations to worship them, not as one of the 
humble array of gods amongst whom the Caesars 
were enrolled, but as Grod upon earth. No wonder 
that the Slaavs should claim affinity with this same 
people, and that the Russian language should afford 
this very interpretation of that monarch's name.f 

Nor are these pretensions advanced under the 
secrecy of priestly instruction and of the confes- 
sional; they are loudly asserted and ostentatiously 
proclaimed in the face of Europe, in a work pub- 
lished at St. Petersburg in 1840, and entitled 
"Civilisation and Russia:" J — 

* From Eussian Catechism. 

f Nebuchadnezzar — Ne bug na da Tzar — There is no God but 
the Czar. J By Count Gurowski. 



POSITION OF THE CZAR IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 221 

" The will of the Emperor is the most literal 
expression of Divine Order transmitted to the earth, 
whose Imperial person is recognised as the living 
head of the State and of the Church, and Whose 
decision no written word of the past can bind." 

It might be supposed that a people thus deprived 
of all incentives would sink into a political sea of 
mud, and that there would result a condition utterly 
unresisting, but capable of nothing. However, 
that wonderful thing, the human mind, is always 
working out for itself unanticipated results, and, 
placed in new circumstances, ever develops new 
features. Political prostration has, by discipline, 
become military strength ; and religious prostration, 
through fanaticism, is transmuted to ambition. 
Thus has the Muscovite race, by the deprivation of 
all the objects which brace the arm of nations, or 
their spirit to heroic deeds, been filled with an unpa- 
ralleled energy, and a desire to assert their lordship 
over the human race. "The Muscovite," says a 
remarkable writer, " pays himself for his present 
degradation by the hopes of his future supremacy." 

The chief occasion is afforded by the existence 
of co-religionaries in neighbouring empires, subject, 
in the one, to the rule of the Mussulman, and in the 
other to that of the still more detested Catholic. 
These populations do not know that the Church of 



222 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

Moscow has denied God and put the Czar in His 
place. They look, besides, to the Czar as their poli- 
tical protector, and are glad to find that he has the 
support of a Church which they imagine to be iden- 
tical with their own. What the Russians apply to 
him as Head of the Church they understand as Head 
of the Christians ; and to them Russia is identified 
with faith, as in Russia faith is identified with the 
Czar. The Russian Church is announced to them as 
the Oriental Church, and by it is to be conferred 
political emancipation. The writer who speaks to 
the Russians of the will of the Emperor in the words 
I have quoted, thus addresses himself to the Oriental 
Church beyond the frontiers of Russia : — 

" In the East, as in the West, for the whole communion 
of the Greeks {subjects of foreign powers), for the Serb, for 
the Armenian, for the Montenegrin, for the Georgian, 
Russia is the Spiritual Life, the Image of God in her Church, 
— the Social Life, bringing Emancipation, Regeneration, and 
Perfection. In the bosom of the Russian Church, Faith 
has endured united and pure, and it will sustain and 
re-temper the faculties of humanity. That Church alone, 
amongst all others, has remained in harmony with Order, 
Hierarchy, and Government ; alone has it preserved its Unity, 
while all others have lost it."* 

Here Russia is presented to them as the personi- 
fication of the Church ; she is there personified as 

* Count Gurowski's " Civilisation and Russia." 



POSITION ASSUMED BY RUSSIA. 223 

their Church.. There the Emperor is visible head of 
State and Church ; that Church and its law are called 
in to give authority to the living and reigning 
head, or itself instantly annihilated, for his decisions 
are not to stand upon any law, or to be bound by 
any. For the Greeks, Russia is to be truth in this 
world and salvation in the next ; all other profes- 
sions as heretical or infidel. The thousand emis- 
saries of Russia are always repeating the same thing. 
The Mussulmans are the " Empire of Hagar ;" the 
Catholics profess a " dog's faith." But on the bor- 
ders of the White Sea (the Mediterranean), where 
England is chiefly apprehended, the art is pecu- 
liarly observable. There there is no rancour of 
contending creeds : the object is effected by epithets. 
I have often heard the expression at Constantinople, 
"Are you Christian or English?" which may equally 
be interpreted, " Are you Christian or infidel ? " or, 
" Are you Russian or English ?" 

If there were subjects of the Russian Crown who 
abhorred and repudiated this blasphemy, there were 
those also who equally detested and abjured the 
external ferocity and internal prostration with which 
it was associated. We find both characters in the 
Starovirtze, adherents of the original faith. They 
are reformers of the public immorality ; they combat 
the general corruption by their life and conversation.. 



224 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

If an exile is succoured on his path, if a prisoner is 
relieved in his want, if an accused person is aided in 
his defence, the helping hand is sure to be that of a 
Starovirtz. With them have taken refuge freedom 
and charity, expelled elsewhere from the land ; and 
the apparently triumphant progress of the system 
furnishes daily increasing occasions for the trial of 
their faith and the exercise of their benevolence. 

They have also their partisans, for they have 
many favourable who do not belong to their body. 
These partisans are to be found amongst the burghers 
of all the cities ; amongst the merchants of every 
class ; in all the branches of industry, and even in 
the army : they are not wanting in the general ad- 
ministration, and they have had a representative in 
the supreme government. From the comprehensive 
nature of their tenets, every class and every depart- 
ment may at one time or another be reduced to seek 
their support, and by the total dissimilarity of their 
ideas from the opinions of the West, that support 
has no character of conspiracy. Opposing the pre- 
sent union of Church and State, they are in turn the 
allies of each of the bodies whom that union may 
oppress ; seeking the restoration of the ancient rights 
of the Boyars and of the prelates, being opposed 
to the serfdom of the people, objecting to foreign 
conquest, they are, so to say, the born protectors of 



THE STAROVIRTZE. 225 

each class as it is oppressed, and a living protest 
against every violence as it is committed. Being 
destitute of all character of confederacy, and of all 
organisation for action, it cannot be compromised 
into acts which would enable the Government to 
extinguish it in blood. 

There being nothing similar in Europe — there 
being, indeed, nothing similar to the government, by 
antagonism to which it subsists — it is but natural 
that it should have escaped observation. It is equally 
so that the Russian Cabinet should have taken every 
care to conceal this its great secret. One of the 
methods which it has most successfully employed to 
that end is the publication of works hostile to itself, 
where every other possible charge is brought save this. 
I take, for instance, the work of Turghenief, where, 
through three volumes of vituperation, not a word is 
said respecting the Starovirtze, and the whole ques- 
tion of religion is excluded, except in the last para- 
graph, where the truth is entirely perverted. 

Russia has also taken care to stock the reading 
public with materials. There is the work of 
Mouravief — a general officer in active service — on 
the Church ! This book is a careful adjustment of 
the circumstances, so as to prevent the past facts 
from being understood. What I have stated I have 
learned from refugees in Turkey, not one of whom 

Q 



226 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

was acquainted with, a European language. From 
them I have also learnt that the Starovirtze of 
Southern Russia had prepared a petition to the Czar, 
praying to be allowed to emigrate into Turkey if not 
permitted to follow in peace their religion at home. 

The Greek Christians of Turkey are indeed them- 
selves Starovirtze ; they are under the Patriarchate 
of Constantinople, and not under that of Kiof : but if 
the Russian sway were established at Constantinople 
the position of both would be identical : they actually 
have become identified by a most extraordinary 
revolution that has occurred in the last few years, 
and which has rendered Constantinople the metro- 
polis of the dissidents of Russia. 

In treating of the Cossacks, I have shown how 
they had met the attempts of the Russian Cabinet to 
assimilate their political administration with that of 
the remainder of the Empire. This population is 
the stronghold of the Starovirtze : it was the extinc- 
tion of that sect that the Government had chiefly in 
view, and while it showed itself disposed and able to 
resist administrative innovation, it was judged to be 
more vulnerable in matters of religion. Between 
the official and the old Church there was no dogmatic 
difference ; a new profession of faith was not re- 
quired, and if the one priesthood could be substituted 
for the other the assimilation was complete. This 



THE STAROVIRTZE. 227 

was then the scheme adopted, and it apparently pre- 
sented great facilities for execution. Hitherto it 
had been a constant practice to impose one of the 
official priests upon a parish, but the result was 
that the Church became instantly deserted.* It was 
now resolved to convert the siege into a blockade, 
and to starve them out by the denial of the offices 
and consolations of religion. The priesthood of 
Malo-Russia is recruited from the monasteries of the 
interior ; the Government seized and deported the 
monks and bishops, especially those of Saratov and 
Kramenchuk, and enrolling them as a regiment sent 
them to die in the marshes of Lankeran on the 
Caspian. As the priests died off the parishes re- 
mained without the means of baptism, confirmation, 
marriage, confession, extreme unction, and burial, 
and were placed irrevocably between the alterna- 
tives of absolute infidelity or submission. 

Such was the plight in which I found a Cossack 
settlement in Turkey, where I first became acquainted 
with these circumstances. They were exceedingly 

* The Emperor looks strictly into these matters. On the 
occasion of one of his visits he went into a church, which he 
found crowded, but which on a former visit he had found 
deserted. On inquiry, he discovered that not one of the con- 
gregation belonged to the parish. It having been found im- 
possible to constrain the parishioners, who were Starovirtze, to 
attend, a congregation was brought for the occasion from a 
distance. 



228 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

devout, but had no priest ; and when I inquired the 
reason, they broke out into most vehement abuse of 
all priests, saying they would as soon see the Emperor 
himself as a priest in their village. 

There were, however, Cossacks high placed in 
the Turkish Government, who cast about for a 
remedy. In the first instance, their views extended 
no further than to the Cossack colonies in Turkey ; 
but circumstances soon gave to them an unexpected 
development. The Porte entered into their views, 
and communicated upon the subject with Yienna, 
which was at that moment very cordial towards 
Turkey, and where the Porte knew, though the 
Austrians did not, that this sect existed. 

At the same time (1771) that the Kalmuks, the 
followers of the Dalai Lama, fled to the Yellow Sea, 
a body of Starovirtze had penetrated into Galicia, 
where, under the name of Euthenians, they remained 
undisturbed and unnoticed till the year 1845, when 
the discovery of them was made by the Archduke 
Ferdinand in the centre of his government, with as 
much surprise as if they had been Red Indians. 
Troops were sent to drive them out, but, bribing the 
officers, they gained time to appeal to Yienna. One 
of their priests, Milaradoff, found access to Prince 
Metternich, and explained to him the real circum- 
stances of the case. Just at this time the communi- 



THE STAROVIRTZE. 229 

cation above referred to took place with Constanti- 
nople, the object of which was the establishment of 
a Starovirtze Bishopric in the Austrian dominions, 
as Turkey would not venture on so bold a measure 
herself. The Austrian Arch- chancellor felt all its im- 
portance, and did not refuse his concert, but on the 
condition that the Porte would find an already con- 
secrated Bishop of the Constantinople Church, who 
would conform in all points to the Starovirtze faith : 
in such case the Gralician district would be converted 
into a Bishopric and the Prelate inducted. Such a 
Bishop was found for the consideration of 200,000 
ducats ; he was despatched to Vienna, received the 
Imperial exequatur, repaired to his new diocese; and 
in the month of June, 1846, laid hands on eight 
priests, consecrating them as bishops, and on three 
hundred laymen, who had repaired from all parts to 
await their consecration as priests. The Russian 
Government was no sooner informed of the step than 
it addressed indignant remonstrances to Vienna, but 
it was too late. She demanded the extradition of 
the refugees ; but the new Bishops had repaired to 
Constantinople, and she was constrained to be satis- 
fied with the abolition of the Bishopric (the Bishop 
was sent in September, under surveillance, to Cylli, 
in Styria), and the engagement was taken to permit 
the entrance of no more Euthenians, and several who 



230 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

have since passed the frontier have been seized and 
given up. 

At the period of the conquest of Constantinople 
by the Turks, the dependence of the Church of Russia 
on that of Constantinople was considered by both 
parties as affording powerful means of action to the 
Sultan in Russia. What I have before stated would 
suffice to show, that at that period there was no 
religious jealousy between Mussulmans and Christ- 
ians. The Church at Constantinople, far from suf- 
fering by the Mussulman conquest, acquired prero- 
gatives and authority such as it had never known 
under the Christian Emperors. It was interfered 
with neither in dogma nor in ceremony, and, more- 
over, power was vested directly in its hands. The 
priests everywhere became municipal officers ; the 
prelates became judges in many civil and in all 
ecclesiastical cases ; and the Patriarchate was erected 
into a supreme court for its nation, the sentence of 
which was executed without pretence to revision, 
except in capital cases, by the Turkish authorities. 
It had, moreover, administrative functions, and 
apportioned the taxes between the provinces. To 
actual power was added dignity and respect. The con- 
queror Mahomed II. himself held the stirrup of the 
Patriarch when he came to visit him. Nothing then 
was more natural than an alliance of the Church 



ALIENATION OF ORIENTAL CHURCHES. 231 

with the Mussulman Government, and the Russian 
Czar had justly to apprehend the political action of 
the priesthood sent from Constantinople throughout 
his dominions. In applying himself to ward off this 
danger was commenced that system of cajolery, and 
framed that scheme of perfidy and corruption, which 
in aftertimes succeeded in reversing upon Turkey 
those very dangers. But the system has been worked 
to excess and pushed beyond endurance, so that now 
the wheel has completely gone round; and the 
fourth century, at present completed, brings us back 
exactly to the position of 1453, when the Churches 
of Russia are supplied from Constantinople with 
priests whose sympathies are with the Sultan and 
against the Czar. This is one of the necessities 
which force Russia into action, and which render 
the destruction of the Ottoman Empire a condition 
of her own existence. 

The revolution to which I have referred affects 
indeed but a most insignificant portion of the subjects 
of Turkey, but circumstances of another kind have 
alienated from Russia each of the other populations 
professing the Greek faith. These I shall now pass 
rapidly in review. 

The creation of the official Church in Russia 
might be conducive to the ends of internal despo- 
tism, but that very despotism had itself its end in 
foreign conquest. The official Church was therefore 



232 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

an instrument forged for the conquest of the Byzan- 
tine Empire. By bringing Church and Govern- 
ment into one line, adhesion to the faith became 
equivalent to allegiance to the Prince. The Patriarch 
of Moscow was to be substituted for that of Constan- 
tinople (possessed by infidels) ; and when the Patriarch 
was merged in the Czar, the sovereign of Russia was 
the legitimate sovereign of the professors of the 
Greek Church, subject to the usurpation of the 
Mussulman Sultan. So long as the administration 
of Russia did not touch those provinces, the sup- 
pression of the Church by the State was not observed, 
and in the disorders of Turkey the Christians natu- 
rally turned to a foreign prince, who, in claiming 
their spiritual allegiance, offered them political pro- 
tection. Under this illusion the whole country was 
opened to the propagandism of the priesthood. The 
Patriarchate of Constantinople fell into the absolute 
dependence of the Russian Embassy. The Greeks, 
insignificant indeed by numbers, but of real impor- 
tance by intrigue, apparent importance, and volu- 
bility, invaded all its offices and filled its prelacy. 
They appeared everywhere as Russian agents and 
creatures. The 12,000,000 of the Greek Church in 
European Turkey, of Turkish,* Roumain, and Slaav 

* The Bulgarians, amounting to about 5,000,000, are of 
Turkish origin. They were the original Tartars of the Volga, 
whence they have derived their name. 



GREEK PRELATES UNPOPULAR. 233 

blood, detested the Greeks as a race ; so that the 
association alienated those populations from Russia. 
This explains the simultaneous and unremitting 
endeavours made during the last thirty years by 
"Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Serbia, not to emancipate 
themselves from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, 
but from the Greek Prelacy, and to substitute natives 
for these adventurers. This was effected in Serbia 
soon after they had acquired their independence. 
A similar change was made in Bulgaria, as one of 
the reparatory measures of 1851. It has also been 
one of the reforms most urgently demanded on the 
north of the Danube. A change in the constitution 
of the Patriarchate has ensued, as may have been 
gathered from the recent declaration in favour of 
the Sultan against the professed protection of the 
Emperor of Russia. What a contrast with the 
parallel case of 1821, when the Patriarch was the 
first victim of a similar declaration, and was hanged 
as a malefactor before his own door! 

But it may be supposed, that if the other popula- 
tions were alienated by this preference of the Greeks, 
the Greeks themselves must have been conciliated. 
~Now the Greeks are far too astute to work for 
Russia, save for their own individual benefit. No 
population knows Russia so well ; none detest her 
so thoroughly; none would suffer more by the triumph 



234 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

of the Russians or the fall of the Turks. Their ser- 
vices have been indeed of immense value, but it is 
only as practising on others : she can use them as 
local agents, as dragomans at Constantinople, and 
as Turkish ambassadors in London and Paris, but 
they are of no service to her whatever as a people ; 
and for this reason, that they do not exist as one : 
they did so, indeed, in the Morea and the islands, 
but these are no longer included in the Turkish 
dominions, and we shall presently see how they 
stand affected. There is in Thessaly a Greek popu- 
lation, which amounts to about half a million ; that 
is the only one, and even that one did not take part 
in the Greek insurrection, when every chance was 
open to it. Elsewhere the Greeks are but shop- 
keepers, or brokers, or priests. They have no 
country, they have no cities, they have no moun- 
tains, they do not bear arms, they are mere peda- 
gogues or huxters. 

I cannot better illustrate the universal defection, 
in a religious sense, from Russia, than by the Church 
measures adopted by independent Greece, so soon as 
that State was constituted on its own basis. Russia, 
of course, expected to establish there her official 
Church ; it was impossible that it should remain de- 
pendent on Constantinople ; an independent Church 
of the Morea was a pretension too visionary for a 



THE CHURCH IN THE KINGDOM OF GREECE. 235 

moment to be admitted ; she consequently de- 
spatched from Odessa by a frigate, through the 
Dardanelles, a model sacerdotal establishment, to be 
set up in the Russian Embassy, The Greeks had, 
from the very commencement of the War of Inde- 
pendence, been especially jealous of her interference ; 
their first appeal to Europe, through England, was 
for protection against that interference : they de- 
clared through the then minister, Rhodias, that they 
would rather perish to a man than submit to any 
conditions dictated by her ; they said that they knew 
her purposes and her perfidy, and preferred to her 
protection the despotism of the Turks. The same 
opinions were energetically expressed by Mavrocor- 
dato in an anonymous letter, published at the time, 
in the " Courier de Smyrne." England, however, as 
usual, forced that protection upon them, enabled the 
Russian faction to establish itself, and sanctioned for 
Europe the belief that Russia commanded the affec- 
tions of the Greeks. With this knowledge there 
will remain nothing enigmatic in the fact, that the 
Greeks should resolve to anticipate the plan of 
uniting them to the official Church by instituting an 
independent Synod of their own. King Otho had 
not yet arrived, but his place was occupied by a 
Regency of four members, one of whom only (Ar- 
mansberg) was a Russian ; the majority, struck by 



236 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

the representations made to them, hastened to pass a 
law for the creation of the Synod. The exasperation 
of Russia knew no bounds ; the majority of this 
Regency, constituted by a European treaty, was 
expelled by violence, troops being landed from the 
Russian squadron to enforce the decree in case they 
had offered resistance. As usual, the order came 
from London, and the pretext that was employed 
was, that they were "Russians."* 

Having thus, I trust, effectually disposed of the 
revolutionary element afforded in Turkey by reli- 
gion, in so far as it can be handled by Russia, I 
now come to the condition of the dissidents inter- 
nally. 

A revolution may be made without any reason, 
but the religious constitution of Islam never could 
afford a reason for the revolt of its subjects of ano- 
ther faith. They are, indeed, rayahs ; but the condi- 
tion of rayah is not one of disqualification or dis- 
honour. In point of social etiquette there is a 
great distinction, but this is one belonging to the 

* The details of these transactions will be found in the history 
of the Eegency, published by Messrs. Abel and Maurer, two of its 
members, with the concurrence of General Heidech. Further and 
confirmatory details will be found in the work on Greece of 
Professor Thiersch, tutor to King Otho, sent to Greece before 
him, and whose return to that country was prevented by the order 
of the English Minister. 



POSITION OF CHRISTIANS IN TURKEY. 237 

habits of the people, and you might as well attempt 
to attack caste in India. The Mussulmans are a 
superior caste : they have become so practically, not 
having been so by the original constitution, for to 
this day those social distinctions do not exist be- 
tween Arabs of different creeds. The Christians, as 
Churches, possess in Turkey privileges unknown to 
any Church in Europe, whilst in religious matters 
the congregation is in possession of rights of which 
they have been deprived in Christendom. Here 
alone is to be seen to-day the constitution of the 
Apostolic times ; here the flock elects the pastor, 
and the Sultan confirms invariably the election : no 
monarch has ever usurped, from either the con- 
sistory or laity, the nomination to bishoprics ; and 
no King or Pope by Concordat has disposed of them 
to each other. The Christians may, in evil times, 
have been subject to misrule and to oppression, 
but it is not as Christians that they have suffered ; 
when animosity has been aroused against them by 
acts of foreign power, or their connexion with 
them, again they have suffered as traitors, not as 
Christians.* 



* An Instruction of the Propaganda, in 1849, to the Lebanon, 
explained for the guidance of priests in the confessional that acts 
which would he criminal against a Christian King are not less so 
against a Mussulman Sultan. 



238 THE GPvEEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

Men are not by nature informed and wise, and it 
does not follow that a people should be content be- 
cause it has reason to be so. Men may enjoy bene- 
fits without knowing them, and, still more, be igno- 
rant of contrasts which would make them doubly 
dear. The Christians of Turkey are not aware that 
they enjoy the benefits of toleration, because they 
have never belonged to a European Government; 
they do not know that they have the benefit of being 
free from taxation to a dominant Church, nor that 
they have the enjoyment of any privilege in the fact 
of electing their pastors : the clergy are not aware 
that they are in possession of singular power in their 
judicial and administrative functions ; but how is it 
that Europeans do not see those things ? How is it 
that they do not enlighten them regarding these 
contrasts ? However, there are those who are nei- 
ther caught by such fallacies nor backward to ex- 
pose them. In a controversial work against the 
Church of Rome, published at Constantinople in 
1850, the most learned of the modern Greeks writes 
as follows : — 

" In reference to the charge brought against us of our being 
subject to the august descendants of Osman, 'whose political 
influence,' according to M. Villereau, ' has entirely swallowed 
up the ecclesiastical power/ we may remark that the Otto- 
man Government does not in the least degree prejudice our 
religion ; neither has it, indeed, at any time up to the present 



OPINION OF A GREEK. 239 

day, in any way injured it. Every nation is under the obli- 
gation of submitting, after God, to a temporal power. 



" Our Government grants us freedom of worship and the 
public performance of our rites, and secures to us the enjoy- 
ment of these privileges through the political authority with 
which it has invested the Patriarchs and Archbishops. 

"The internal administration of the Church has at no 
period been interfered with, the election of the four Patri- 
archs and of their bishops having ever been freely made by 
their own synods. The career of religious instruction lies 
open to the holy ministers, and even the schools for public 
instruction enjoy the patronage of Government. If at times, 
and in some places, far from the centre of administration, or 
in the midst of troubles, unruly men have raised their 
barbarous hands upon churches and schools, the Government, 
as soon as apprised of such occurrences, has remedied the 
evil and punished the guilty. 

" The celebration of divine worship in our holy temples is 
performed with so much pomp, that a Carmelite monk, 
nearly two hundred years ago, after being present at one of 
our ceremonies, expressed his admiration as follows : — 'On the 
4th of January, 1679, I was present, in the name of Mr. De 
Nointel, during the celebration of mass by the Patriarch 
Dionysius at Constantinople. I cannot imagine that any- 
thing more imposing and magnificent could have been exhi- 
bited on this day, even in the most flourishing times of the 
Greek Church.' 

"Were we to be so presumptuous as to pry into the 
wonderful and inscrutable decrees of Divine Providence, we 
might discover that the preservation of the Orthodox and 
Catholic Church was secured through the downfall itself of 
the Roman Empire. For who does not at once perceive that 
ultimately the Orthodox remnant would have been rent in twain 



240 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

by those unfortunate sovereigns who, listening to the sugges- 
tions of the Pope and other European Governments, saw no 
hope of preserving their power save by apostasy, and by ab- 
juring the orthodox, the catholic, and the apostolic faith of their 
forefathers ; they contrived to maintain themselves for a short 
time by gradually corrupting that Church, and by the appoint- 
ment of Patriarchs, such as the fraudulently elected Beccos, and 
Gregory the pseudo-Gennadius 1 "Who does not see that this 
must have continued whichever of the Western Powers had 
obtained the ascendancy 1 Were it not that the narrative 
would cast ignominy on the name of Christian, and had I 
paper to waste and time to spare, I might, from the materials 
of Frank historians themselves, revive the recollection of the 
many and furious persecutions, the coercive measures, exiles, 
imprisonments, tortures, martyrdoms, which our immortal 
forefathers had to endure, whenever the Papal rule under the 
cloak of a Michael or a Beccos, or the Frank Crusaders, 
especially in Syria, Cyprus, Crete, and e^en at Constantinople 
under Cardinal Pelagius, prevailed ; and thus point out the 
tyrannical violence with which the Pope's blessing hand was 
used for the destruction of Orthodoxy. 



"Shortly before the fall of Constantinople the Pope's 
emissary assured the distracted Constantine, who had em- 
plored his aid, that this would be granted on condition of his 
receiving again Gregory Mummus, whom he had expelled for 
professing Latin doctrines. At this critical emergency, when 
both the Emperor and his people, reduced to the last 
extremity, were on the verge of renouncing their faith, the 
interposition of the sharp-edged sword of the invincible 
Ottomans was evidently providential. It cut asunder at 
one blow, and for ever, the chain which impiety had cast 
around the neck of the Church professing orthodoxy — the 
Church which on this occasion washed off by her martyrs' 



OPINION OF A GREEK. 241 

blood, whatever stains or defilements had polluted her in her 
contact with the temptations of heresy ; and now rejoices in 
presenting herself before God, ' purified, holy, immaculate, 
having neither spot nor wrinkle.' 

"The throne of Constantinople had become by heresy a 
snare unto the feet of religion : how, then, should not every one 
of the faithful exclaim with the Psalmist, ' The snare is broken 
asunder and we are delivered. Our help is in the name of the 
Lord!' For this it is we do praise, and must ever praise, with 
thanksgivings, the Almighty, who has provided us with, not 
as M. Villereau would have it, 'a scourge,' but in reality 
with a severe master, but a faithful guardian — the Ottoman 
Government, which proved instrumental in cutting off every 
connexion between us and the nations of the West, and thus 
effectually preventing the corruption which threatened our 
immaculate religion." — UuxtertyZv "Exiy^av, torn. i. p. 245. 

The same writer, speaking of the constitution of 
the Church, thus proceeds : — 

"The conqueror and his illustrious successors, down to 
the present Sovereign, have invariably invested the persons 
of the Patriarchs with plenipotentiary dignity whenever the 
constitution interferes with religion, or even religion with the 
constitution. Likewise legislators and expounders of the 
law are of opinion, that the Sheriat-i-Sheriff in sundry cases, 
such as matrimony, affinity by marriage, inheritance, when 
it decides differently from the law of the Christians and the 
precepts of the Gospel, or the maxims of the Apostles, shall 
not be enforced, in order not to wound the consciences of the 
Christian subjects, whose liberty of worship is declared in- 
violable ; and they therefore invested their spiritual pastors, 
such as Patriarchs and Bishops, with the power of pronouncing 
judgment, and so punishing the disobedient and unruly." 



242 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

I have now to point out a recent infraction of those 
ancient and venerable institutions ; but the incident, 
however it may affect the future fate of Turkey, 
confirms what I have said respecting its character. 
It has deviated from its rules, but it is a rule from 
which it has deviated; the deviation has sprung 
neither from pride nor from pretension, but from 
weakness, and the crime has been imposed by the 
powers of the "West. What I am about to relate 
ought to be easily apprehended by Englishmen, since 
it is no other than a similar act to that which was 
designated a Papal Aggression, by which this great 
empire was for the space of a year agitated, dis- 
tracted, and convulsed. 

A Papal rescript, similar to that of 1850 for 
England, partitioned the Catholic Armenians into 
six Bishoprics, appointing Bishops thereto. Turkey, 
like England, submitted, but only in consequence of 
the coercion applied to it by the French Government : 
but observe the difference of sense of the people ; 
the usurpation of the Pope was not denounced by 
the Mussulman as an attack upon the sovereignty of 
the Sultan, and it was not received as a boon by the 
Armenians. The Sultan resisted it as an oppression 
of his Catholic subjects, and the Armenians resisted 
it as an usurpation on their own rights. There was 
no animosity between Christian and Mussulman ; no 



PAPAL RESCRIPT IN TURKEY. 243 

Grand Vizier published inflammatory letters ; no 
ministry was displaced; no absurd or inoperative 
bill was carried for a prerogative that never was 
touched, and the injured party was not left at once 
unprotected and vituperated; no greater triumph 
was given to the Pope, beyond all his other triumphs, 
in a triumph over the mind and the divan of Turkey.* 
The difference of this common sense resulted from 
the natural position in which the Christian Churches 
in Turkey stood, and from their possession and 
exercise of ancient and immemorial rights. "No man 
could there be deceived with reference to the nature 
of the Pope's rescript ; it was clearly the abrogation 
of the right of the community to nominate its own 
religious officers, and the subversion of their corpo- 
rate authority. Who, then, could have imagined that 
a regulation touching titles could affect the wrong, or 
touch the matter in any way at all ? Who could be 
so insane as to suppose that the Sultan's authority 
was compromised therein, except in so far as that a 
particular class of his subjects might be injured ? 

A Roman Catholic Bishop in Turkey does not 
stand in the same position as one in England ; he is 
not a nominee of a foreign priest whom the Govern- 
ment does not choose to recognise, but being the 
elected of the people and their administrator he 
* Words of Lord John Kussell altered to the case. 



244 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

becomes thereby a functionary of tbe Crown. The 
Porte has no Concordat, and no treaty with the Pope, 
but it does not say — " Do what you like with your 
spiritual subjects for I do not profess your faith ; " but 
it says to its subjects — " Write to the Pope what 
letters you like, and read, if yon are disposed, what 
letters he sends ; but no prelate is to rule you, except 
when he has received my firman of investiture, and 
that firman is granted only on your own election." 
Consequently, the rescript of the Pope fell just as 
dead a letter as if it had constituted so many 
pashalics or nominated so many pashas. But when 
the French Government was known to press the 
matter, and it was apprehended that the Porte would 
yield, the Armenians interposed by petition, praying 
that the firman might not be granted. Prance, 
however, persevered. Simultaneously a fictitious 
quarrel was got up between her and Russia, on the 
subject of the Holy Sepulchre ; the instruction to 
M. Lavalette, received from the Pope himself, was 
to yield on the latter question and to press the former. 
The Russian Government, who certainly had as much 
interest in the one as in the other, drops the one and 
presses the other. England then, in the midst of the 
full frenzy of its " Papal Aggression Bill," recom- 
mends a "temporising policy; "that is, submission; 
or, in other words, the granting of a firman, which 



FRENCH INTERFERENCE WITH CATHOLICS. 245 

would have been equivalent to the inducting by Royal 
ordinance of Cardinal Wiseman as Archbishop of 
Westminster. But all this would not have sufficed 
unless an Armenian Primate (Artim Bey), to whom 
that people had entrusted its care, and who belonged 
to the hollow system of Egypt, had at the last 
moment turned round, misleading the Porte by that 
very authority entrusted to him to oppose the 
measure. Thus was extorted this fatal concession, 
not by infatuation and fanaticism, but by art and 
intrigue, in which Russia nowhere appears, having 
her work done for her, as usual, by her miserable 
tools. Turkey may arouse the fanaticism of her 
Christian subjects, but it is only in so far as she 
yields to the threats and counsels of her European 
protectors, or degenerates into a resemblance with 
them of character and infatuation. The following 
letter from a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, often 
referred to in the discussions on the Papal Bill, 
cannot fail to be read with interest : — 

" Lavalette came, before going to Constantinople, to receive 
his instructions from His Holiness, and though there were 
the two questions, that of the Bishops and that of the Holy 
Places at Jerusalem, the first was considered the one of 
importance. His means of carrying it were at that time 
Artim Bey, the very man upon whom the adversaries of the 
Bishops relied ! 

"The clergy will now see the avenues of preferment 



246 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

closed against them, and will be reduced to dependence on a 
distant court, and from it solicit all favours through the 
French Ambassador or Archbishop. If this were but a 
solitary phenomenon it would be deplorable ; but how much 
more so when it is one of a series of measures tending to 
destroy throughout the world, in the Catholic clergy, all 
freedom of action and all spirit of independence, placing them 
under the direct management and direct nomination of the 
Propaganda ! 

" To Turkey this is peculiarly dangerous, as she has no 
representatives to watch the manoeuvres of the powers who 
direct the movements of Rome. It has hitherto been the 
policy of the Porte to prevent its Catholic subjects from 
being subject to foreign interference ; and who could have 
dared to press it against so triumphant a reason for its refusal 
as this, — ' "We only give firmans for Bishops on the solicitation 
of their future flocks?' For a whole year the Armenians 
rejected the solicitations of the Pope to ask for this firman, 
and now comes an Ambassador, not from the Pope but from 
France, and the firmans are delivered. It might prevent 
much evil if all correspondence with Rome were carried on 
through a member of the Divan — the great majority of 
Catholic prelates ■would hail such a decision. The Catholic 
Patriarch of Antioch was only prevented from making such a 
proposal last year by apprehensions of the vengeance of the 
Propaganda. Any power that now wishes to use that 
population of the Turkish Empire has only to purchase the 
Secretary of the Propaganda, and venality in that quarter is 
not unheard of. 

"The Porte may retrace its steps — it may, for the future, 
insist upon the Pope's respecting the ancient privileges of 
the Armenian nation in the election of their own Bishops. 
"When it consented at the Pope's request, more than twenty 
years ago, to withdraw a large number of the Armenians from 
the authority of the Primate of Constantinople, it could not 



FRENCH INTERFERENCE WITH CATHOLICS. 247 

mean to establish over them an absolute master and a foreign 
head, who might be but a puppet in the hands of enemies. 
The Pope has a right to confirm the election of a Catholic 
Primate ; but here his ancient jurisdiction, except in appeal, 
ceases. Let the Porte secure to the national clergy and 
people the liberty of canonical election, which up to the 
present time they have always enjoyed, and it will not only 
ensure the unbounded devotion to the Sultan of the Catholic 
Armenians, but it will ere long see them joined by large 
numbers of the religious subjects of the Eussian Catholics of 
Utchmiadzin." 

This measure was followed by a Papal rescript to 
the Papal legate of Antoura, in the Lebanon, which 
is the stronghold of Catholicism in the East ; the 
effect of which would have been to transfer into the 
hands of the Roman authorities the complete control of 
the conventual and other religious funds, in a country 
where a very large proportion of the public property 
belongs to the convents, which may be considered 
rather in the light of industrial associations than of as- 
cetics. Here, however, the resistance of the people was 
successful, and France did not interfere. There are 
sufficient local grounds to prevent her from attempt- 
ing it ; the ill-will of the Catholic Armenians was to 
her a matter of no importance : not so the ill-will of 
the Maronites, which she must have thereby incurred. 
The Lebanon has always been for her a source of 
trouble and vexation ; it is termed, in the Paris 
Foreign- Office slang, la Bouteille cVEncre. To avoid 



248 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

the recurrence of similar troubles and dangers, the 
consulate of Beyrout had been removed from the list 
of political consulates and placed on the commercial, 
and the personnel had been changed to give effect to 
this alteration. Had the matter been pushed in the 
same way as that of the Bishops, the Catholic body 
would have been simultaneously convulsed in every 
portion of the Ottoman dominions. At the same 
time the Maronites were exasperated by the measures 
taken for pushing Protestant proselytism, through 
the instrumentality of the American missionaries. 
In the North, the Armenian Catholics threatened to 
relapse to the old Armenian Church, or to join the 
Greek ; the old Armenian Church is now under the 
patronage of Russia, and the Greek Church is of 
course her church. 

The Pope, in the plenitude of his power in ancient 
times, and in the religious freedom of action which 
he retained till the late revolutions, never attempted 
such measures as these. In later times the direction 
of its policy was quite the reverse, and Europe was 
astonished to behold a legate of the Pope at Constan- 
tinople and an ambassador of the Sultan at Rome. I 
have the best reason for knowing that this was no mat- 
ter of caprice, but based upon a mutual appreciation 
and a necessity of common defence : in fact, matters 
had gone so far that it was a question of instituting 



OPPORTUNITIES POSSESSED BY POME. 249 

a diplomatic college at Rome, and directing the 
studies of one of the most powerful of the religious 
corporations to the mastering of the policy of Russia, 
and to the means of upsetting it ; and Rome pos- 
sessed for this end opportunities, not only immense, 
but seductive. It might have made itself the director 
of the Catholic governments ; it might have created 
in both Houses of Parliament in England a body of 
protectors of English rights and of public honour ; 
and while securing itself against the deadly blows 
levelled at the faith of Poland, and securing its own 
station as a Church in opposition to the Greek Church, 
might have given to itself a claim to the respect and 
veneration of mankind. The power of Rome would 
have revived in a new fashion, a moral character 
conferred upon its action, and an intellectual aim 
given to its pursuits. No greater danger has me- 
naced Russia in this or in any former age ; but then 
came the revolutions of 1848. 

Shortly after these events I met an influential 
person in the counsels of Rome, who had been one of 
the most active in promoting the plan above indi- 
cated. His first words were these, — " Circumstances 
are now completely altered ; ive oive everything to the 
Czar, In the moment of our distress, with unheard- 
of generosity, he came forward, and placed his 
treasury and his army at our disposal. Of course, 



250 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

that kind of succour was out of the question; but 
we owe to him the presence of the French." On ex- 
pressing my surprise that he had not perceived the 
escape that Russia had had, and that he should mis- 
take an insolent triumph for a benevolent act, he 
answered, — -"Oh, we are not deceived; we know 
that it is out of no love for us : but we are upon the 
same line — that of order." * 

The startling circumstances thus revealed are 
fully borne out by documents that have been made 
public. So early as the month of February, 1848, 
the Cabinet of St. Petersburg thus addressed itself to 
the Court of Rome : — 

" It is beyond doubt that the Holy Father will find in his 
Majesty the Emperor a loyal supporter in effecting the resti- 
tution to him of temporal and spiritual power, and that the 
Russian Government will apply itself to all the measures 
that may contribute to this end, seeing that it nourishes in 
respect to the court of Rome no sentiment of rivalry and no 
religious animosity." f 



* Mazzini having been once asked how he could reconcile to 
himself the pecuniary assistance afforded by Russia to his party, 
answered, — " There is no love lost between us ; we merely happen 
to be on the same line — that of disorder." 

f " Egli e fuor di dubbio che il S. Padre trovera in S. M. 
l'lmperatore un leale aiuto per farlo ristabilire nel suo potere 
temporale e spirituale, e che il G-overno Russo si associera franca- 
mente a tutti provvedimenti che potranno condurre a queste fine, 
che esso non nutre verso le Corte di Roma verun sentimento di 
rivalita ne veruna animosita religiosa." — Farina, " Stato Romano," 
vol. iii. p. 215. 



CATHOLIC BISHOPS IN ENGLAND. 251 

The Papal rescripts for England and Turkey 
have therefore to be referred to the influence which 
had now gained the ascendency at Rome ; and in 
consequence of the revolutionary movements which 
England had fomented : indeed, during the dis- 
cussions on the Papal Bill, it was on all hands 
admitted that the aggressions sprang from a poli- 
tical and not from a religious source. The English 
Prime Minister spoke of a conspiracy acting from 
Pome and threatening Europe. This was after all 
the religious topics had been exhausted.* The con- 
spiracy that ruled at Pome was not Prance, but 
Pussia. She it was who had an object in setting 
Protestants and Catholics by the ears ; she it was 
who had to convulse Turkey by a religious hatred, 
and to make the Catholics, no less than the Greeks, 
turn to her as their sole hope and protection. 
France's object in protecting the Catholics was to 
gain influence. "Was it to be secured by openly 
forcing their own Sultan to oppress them ? The 
Pope sought to extend his flock by proselytism. 
Could he have devised an innovation, the unmis- 
takeable effect of which was apostasy ? 

* Lord Shaftesbury, in his spoken speech, had already taken 
the same view. He spoke of the rescript having been dictated by 
the " bayonets from which the Church of Rome drew its breath;'' 
but all this was cut out of the speech in Hansard, where nothing 
but " Catholic " and " Protestant" is to be found. 



252 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

This leads me to a matter as yet unopened, but 
which ere long may attain, as all others with which we 
are mixed up, a painful and noxious importance, and 
that is the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. 
This, indeed, is an old story, and forgotten in our 
times ; but circumstances haTe now assumed that 
shape in which it may one day suddenly be realised. 
Whenever the Czars have had a point to carry 
with the Pope they have flattered him. with the 
hope of conformity — a hope utterly vain, because 
then the Greek Church would have become Catholic. 
The altered position of the Pope and Czar would now 
make the Catholic Church and the Catholic body 
Russian ; the Roman Catholics would no longer 
then be filled with abhorrence of the chanting of 
the first Greek mass in St. Sophia, but would be the 
first to sing hallelujahs or paeans on the event. 

If such an idea does exist in the thoughts of 
the Russian Cabinet, we will doubtless observe traces 
of it in their conduct, and preparations for its execu- 
tion. Such symptoms are to be observed, and they 
are of a nature to render any other explanation 
difficult. 

So soon as the Russian Cabinet had taken its 
measures to render a revolution in Italy inevitable, 
the Emperor repaired thither to lay the seeds for 
the after-game. It was a dramatic performance : 



RUSSIAN MANOEUVRES AT ROME. 253 

he, the " head, of the Greek Church," knelt to the 
Pope for his benediction ; he kissed his hand and 
ring ; he then repaired to St. Peter's, and laid him- 
self at full length upon the tomb. Meanwhile, his 
Minister narrated to the public the circumstances of 
the interview; promised the Papal Government 
every concession in respect to Poland, and used 
every means, social and diplomatic, to make the 
Pomans believe that the Muscovites were their only 
friends on earth. One of the avowed organs of 
Russia meanwhile, following one of her religio- 
military authorities, pointed out the necessity of a 
union of Pome and St. Petersburg to combat immo- 
rality, infidelity, and Protestantism. 

The question of mixed marriages had hitherto 
been one of the great differences between Pome and 
Pussia, as it had also been with the Protestants. 
From the month of March, 1848, the Greek Popes 
abstained from requiring in such marriages the con- 
ditions, hitherto rigorously enforced, respecting 
bringing up the children in the Greek faith. The 
form in which they expressed themselves was that 
of deferring the settlement for a year, sometimes 
remarking, to the surprise of their auditors, — "In 
a short time we shall all be of one church." 

From the same period all persecution has ceased 
against the Catholics in Pussia, and the prelates of 



254 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

that Church, haye been treated with the greatest 
consideration and distinction.* 

The most significant incident, however, has been 
the publication of a ukase on the subject of Purga- 
tory, assimilating in that respect the doctrines of the 
Greek to that of the Roman Church. 

To judge of the possibility of such a union, we 
must turn to those doctrinal points upon which the 
project has hitherto been apparently shipwrecked, 
and which have consequently been supposed to pre- 
sent insuperable obstacles : they will be found to be 
exceedingly tractable. 

The first point is the procession of the Holy 
Ghost. A solemn anathema had been denounced 
against whoever should add or take away from the 
creed. The Pope added the "Filioque," and the 
Greek Patriarch, not denying the doctrine, denied 
the authority, and declared that the Pope had 
incurred the anathema. The authority that has 
prostrated the ancient Russian Church, submitted the 
prelacy to military discipline, and made a layman 
chief priest — the Czar to-day — will find no difficulty 
in introducing the " Filioque" and in raising the 
anathema. 

As regards Purgatory, the objection is rather for 

* See note at the end of the Essay. 



DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CHURCHES. 255 

the ignorant than the learned. The Greeks admit 
prayers for the dead, and thereby recognise a place 
of durance for the soul. The Latin Church has used 
the word as expressing St. James's idea of the puri- 
fying of fire, which separates the good metal from 
the dross ; while, as the body is not exposed to it, the 
fire must be metaphorical ; and such, in fact, was the 
declaration registered in the Council of Florence, 
under Eugenius IV. The recent ukase disposes of 
the abstraction. 

The only other point not purely one of discipline 
is the Supremacy of the Pope ; but all the Pope pre- 
tends to over the Patriarch of the East is the appellate 
jurisdiction, the presidency in general councils, and 
the right of calling them. The Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople yields to him the place of honour, 
holding him primus inter pares ; the Patriarch of 
Moscow, who may be recreated for the nonce, will 
question neither. 

Every other distinction in discipline has already 
been conceded by the Church of Pome to the mem- 
bers of the Eastern Church who have entered her 
communion under the name of United Greeks, just in 
the same way as she has adopted the national pecu- 
liarities and the original liturgies of the Copts, 
Jacobites, Maronites, and Armenians. The clergy 
of the United Greeks are married ; the Eucharist is 



256 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

consecrated in leavened bread; the Greek, and not 
the Latin language, is used in the liturgy ; sculp- 
ture is excluded from the churches. On the other 
hand, in the Greek Church, the names of the Popes 
canonised previous to the separation are venerated 
as saints, and spoken of as successors of St. Peter ; 
and a Catholic at the hour of death would have no 
difficulty in sending for a Greek confessor, if a 
Catholic one was not at hand. 

Thus, then, the difficulties of every kind, in so 
far as doctrine and discipline are concerned,, are 
smoothed down ; the advisability of the measure 
will depend solely upon political considerations. The 
objection which hitherto prevailed in the independ- 
ence of the Pope has disappeared, and the union of 
the Churches would seem to be the recompense of 
the supremacy achieved at Rome and Vienna. It 
would be the application to the West of a similar 
process of disorganisation- to that which has been so 
long employed in the East ; it would be of the most 
essential importance in the assimilation of Poland, 
for in the negotiation mutual concessions would be 
made, and it would be easy thus to obtain the sub- 
stitution of a Greek for a Poman hierarchy, and of 
the Greek for the Latin tongue. 

The point, however, which we have chiefly to 
consider is the effect on Turkey ; I speak not at 



POSITION OF RUSSIA TOWARDS CHRISTIANS. 257 

present of indirect effects produced through Europe, 
but of her direct relations with the two creeds. 
Passing by the period of diplomatic action from a 
distance, during which the professors of the Eastern 
Church appear to be, and act, as her partisans, and 
coming to that of actual possession — a possession 
which in the first instance would be confined to 
European Turkey, and which would be accompanied 
by the retreat into Asia of the Mussulman Turks — let 
us see in what predicament Russia would then find 
herself. The suppression of the Mussulman govern- 
ment, the retreat of the Mussulman population, at 
once sweep away all the grounds of favour which 
she can possess at the present moment, and every 
means of conciliation and association which she can 
use. Down on the native population, taught by 
herself, filled with the most extravagant sense of its 
importance and exultation in its triumph, would 
come the crushing weight and the exasperating 
features of the Russian administration; instantly 
the religious question will appear; she would find 
herself placed between two organisations — the one 
Catholic, her bitter foe from olden time ; the other 
Greek. Here let us pause. 

At the period of the Treaty of Kainardji, in 1774, 
M. de Thugut, then internuncio of Austria at the 
Porte, addressed to his government a memoir re- 



258 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

viewing the treaty and its effects, anticipating, under 
misapprehensions then universal, the downfall of the 
Ottoman Empire, in consequence of the religious 
adherence of the Greek Church to Eussia, but, with 
a discrimination seldom equalled, showing to the 
Austrian Government that it could compensate for 
those acquisitions by none on its own part, and that 
the neighbouring fragments of Turkey which it might 
incorporate could only hasten its own final subju- 
gation. " Such aggrandisement," he says, " of the 
Austrian territory would not excite the jealousy of 
Russia, for those provinces (Bosnia and Serbia) are 
inhabited almost entirely by Mahomedans and schis- 
matic Christians : the former would not be tolerated 
as residents there ; the latter, considering the close 
vicinage of the Oriental Eussian Empire, would not 
delay in emigrating thither ; or if they remained, 
their faithlessness to Austrian power would occasion 
continued troubles ; and thus an extension of territory 
without intrinsic strength, so far from augmenting 
the power of his Imperial Majesty, would only serve 
to weaken it." 

This statement applies to Eussia herself : those 
Christians, " schismatic " to Austria, would be no 
less schismatic to Eussia ; if, as the price of their 
having expelled " the accursed Empire of Hagar," 
according to the terms of the publication of the 



POSITION OF RUSSIA TOWARDS CHRISTIANS. 259 

Holy Synod of Moscow, they were required to re- 
ceive the Emperor as Vicegerent of God upon earth, 
and to acknowledge as Patriarch a General Officer 
and his colleagues, they would very soon remember 
not only that the Mussulman Caliph had imposed 
neither serfage nor conscription, but that he re- 
spected the name of Christ and honoured His people, 
their priests and prelates. With the fickleness which 
we must admit as the cause of the event which we 
contemplate, they would soon invite a Sultan from 
Broussa or Iconium, as they had invited a Czar 
from Moscow or St. Petersburg : in this invitation 
they would be earnestly joined by the Latins;* the 
14,000,000 or 15,000,000 of Eastern Christians, 
suddenly become Starovirtze, would make common 
cause with the 8,000,000 Starovirtze of the Russian 
Empire,f with the 14,000,000 of Latins in Poland 
and Turkey, and all these would look to the de- 
scendant of Osman as their protector. 

In prospect, therefore, of a practical occupation 
of Turkey, some means must be devised for changing 

* There is a remarkable tendency amongst them at present 
towards Eome, but it is prompted by the desire to escape from 
Eussian influence through the Church, in the same way as the 
Christians in Circassia became Mussulmans. 

f The number is not known, but in any movement they would 
unite the Malo-Eussians and the Cossacks, estimated at 10,000,000. 



260 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

the present religious arrangements of the Russian 
Empire. The Czar cannot reveal himself to the new 
subjects he expects to acquire under an aspect 
which, in their eyes, will at once stamp him with 
the character of Antichrist ; and he is placed in the 
alternative of surrendering a power which himself 
and his predecessors have laboured during five cen- 
turies to obtain, or by some such compact or com- 
position as that to which I refer to break the 
concert of religious opposition, which otherwise in- 
fallibly will be directed against him the moment he 
assumes the direct administration of the Ottoman 
Empire. That empire the Ottomans acquired, be- 
cause they were not Christians; that neutrality which 
they have maintained in matters of religion and 
absolute toleration,* they have taught as a habit to 
their subjects. Russia has promised them something 
better ; they will forget neither lesson. If the power 
of Turkey fall of itself, its European dominions will 
present a frightful scene of rage and persecution ; 
but if the head of the official Church of Russia pre- 
sume to replace it, then will be opened an era from 
the contemplation of which imagination shrinks; 
the darkest scenes of the most barbarous ages will 
be re-enacted ; English, French, and Grerman blood 

* Passage from " Kussia and Turkey." 



NOTES ON THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 261 

will flow mingled with that of Russian, Turk, Slaav, 
and Greek, into the Danube and the Euxine. "We 
shall be called to that field, not as protectors but 
as gladiators ; and Russia, if she does not in the end 
acquire a second empire, will, at all events, acquire 
the best thing next to it — she will leave a desert. 



Notes of the Editor to the foregoing Essay. 



On the 15th of February, 1865, a Keport of a Committee was read 
before the Lower House of Convocation on the subject of com- 
munications with a committee of the American clergy relative to 
" intercommunion with the Busso-Greek Church." It appears 
from this Keport that " an Association has been formed in England, 
called ' The Eastern Church Association,' which already numbers 
amongst its patrons the Most Eev. the Archbishop of Belgrade, 
the Most Eev. the Archbishop of Dublin, with several English 
Bishops, the principal objects of which are to inform the English 
public as to the state of the Eastern Churches, and to make known 
the doctrines of the Anglican Church to the Christians of the 
East. The Committee has been favoured at their last meeting 
with the presence of the Very Eev. Archpriests Popoff and 
Wassilieff, chaplains of the Imperial Embassies of Eussia in 
London and Paris, from both of whom they have received the most 
cordial assurances of personal co-operation." 

Of course they have ; this being merely the repetition of the 
traditional action of the Eussian Government, which has repeatedly 
made overtures of union to the Pope whenever it wanted to make 
use of him, especially in the time of the Eussian struggles with 
the Order of the Teutonic Knights. 



262 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

This scheme has originated with Eussia, which has taken 
advantage of the presence of a small party of innovators in the 
English Church, who have heen foiled in their attempt to draw 
closer to Home, and who seem to forget that, with the exception 
of celibacy of the clergy, the Eussian Church possesses in a higher 
degree than the Latin Church what some have chosen to call 
" the mummeries of superstition." Union, therefore, is impossible. 
Eussia, however, would gain her end by letting herself appear 
disposed to such an union, by which she would gain some 
sympathy, and to that extent indifference to her oppression, 
perhaps extermination, of the Catholics in Poland. 

All Eussian history is there to show that the Church in Eussia 
has been a political instrument, subject to the objects of State 
aggrandisement; the religion has become Eussian, rather than 
that Eussia has been converted to the religion. Vladimir, the 
first Christian Prince, would not at once be baptized, but went 
with an army to Constantinople, as Karamsine says, " to conquer 
for himself his religion.'' 

At the time of the Crimean war Western Europe was startled 
by the mention of the God of Eussia, and wondered what deity they 
possessed peculiar to themselves, circumscribed to their country. 
Karamsine first mentions this divinity in 1380, after the battle of 
Koulikoff, and mistakenly attributes the words of the conquerors 
— " The God of the Eussians is powerful'' — to the defeated Mamai, 
khan of the Tatars ; a speech which it was impossible for him, 
who was a Mussulman, to have made, or for his historians to have 
written. 

This phrase gives the measure of their notions of spiritual 
things, and the way in which they are made to subserve national 
pride and aggrandisement. The phrase is, however, a remnant of 
the old paganism as much as a sign of national vanity. 

Whilst some in England are imagining that intercommunion 
with Eussia would be intercommunion with the Oriental Church, 
they would do well to remember that the Moscow Synod is 
separated from the Patriarch of Constantinople, or head of the 
Oriental Church, by the usurpations of the Eussian Emperors, and 
that pious and scrupulous Eussians, on coming to Constantinople, 



NOTES ON THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 263 

have to make their peace with the Patriarch, to purge their schism 
on their own account. 

At this moment, too, Prince Couza has commenced a separation 
of the Church in Wallachia and Moldavia from the Greek Church, 
by arrogating to himself the nomination of the metropolitans and 
bishops in those two principalities. 

P. 215. — These statements are verified on reference to Karam- 
sine, from whose history it appears that Eussia, having been for 
eight years deprived of a metropolitan by the imprisonment of the 
Metropolitan Isidore by the great Prince Vasili, on account of the 
part taken by him at the Council of Florence. Four bishops, as 
Karamsine says, " in conformity with the desire of the Sovereign, 
consecrated Jonas as metropolitan, authorised thereto by the 
blessing of the Patriarch given to that bishop in 1437. But in the 
circulars sent to all the bishops of Eussian Lithuania, Jonas main- 
tains that he had been elected by the bishops of Eussia, according 
to the institutions of the Apostles, and bitterly reproaches the 
Greeks with respect to their conduct at the Council of Florence. 
It is at least dating from this period that we commenced no longer to 
depend upon the Church of Constantinople, which reflects the highest 
honour on Vasili. The spiritual tutelage of the Greeks cost us 
very dear. During five centuries, that is to say, since St. Vladimir 
until Vasili the Blind, we only meet with six Eussian metropolitans. 
Without reckoning the presents which were sent to the Emperors 
and Patriarchs, the foreign metropolitans, always ready to leave 
our country, heaped up treasures to send them to Greece. They 
could not bring a very sincere zeal to the interests of Eussia, and 
their respect for our princes could not be as profound as that of 
our countrymen. These truths were evident; nevertheless, the 
fear of touching religious matters, by scandalising the people by an 
innovation in its ancient usages, had not hitherto allowed the great 
princes to withdraw themselves from the supreme authority of the 
clergy of Constantinople. The disunion of that clergy, on the occa- 
sion of the Council of Florence, rendered easy to Vasili the means 
of doing that which several of his predecessors had abstained from 
executing from timidity." — Kaeamsine, vol. v. chap. 3, section 
" Sage administration de Vasili." 



264 THE GREEK AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 

P. 254. — It must be remembered that this was written before 
the commencement of the measures which have led to the crushing 
of Poland, ending with the persecution of the clergy, and sup- 
pression of the Polish convents; which latter measure has been 
approved of by some in England, as good government. 



265 



VI. 



ON THE PROTECTION AFFORDED TO BRITISH SUBJECTS 
AND THEIR INTERESTS ABROAD. 

"No impartial Englishman, who lias travelled much 
and mingled largely with. Foreigners, will deny, that 
as a nation we are extremely unpopular throughout 
the world. 

One of the most frequent accusations brought 
against us is, that we are ever ready to bully the 
weak, whilst we never attempt to do so with the 
strong ; from whom it is asserted, we often put up 
with slights, and even positive insults, which, as a 
great nation, we ought to resent. 

At first sight there would appear to be some 
truth in this assertion, when, in looking back, one 
calls to mind the Sulphur case with Naples, that of 
Don Pacifico in Greece, and some rather sharp prac- 
tice with the minor states of the New "World. 

So much for our high-minded measures, to which 
is contrasted our extreme moderation in the " Charles 
et Georges" affair with France; or an equal for- 



266 PROTECTION TO SUBJECTS ABROAD. 

bearance shown towards the United States, when 
Grey Town, then under our immediate protection, 
was bombarded and utterly destroyed by an Ame- 
rican frigate. 

We are well aware that there were reasons, and, 
for the most part, good ones, which induced Her 
Majesty's Government to exercise severity in the 
first-named cases and forbearance in the second ; 
but still, as these reasons are not generally known 
abroad, we are judged of by our acts alone, and 
hence our unpopularity with foreigners in general. 

With regard to our forbearance, that is a matter 
which solely concerns ourselves ; and we can well 
afford to smile when any doubt is expressed of our 
ability to resent affronts, whenever we conceive that 
we have really been insulted. 

The charge brought against us of severity to- 
wards weaker states is, however, not so easily dis- 
posed of: and as that has originated by what is 
considered as our undue interference in favour of 
the private interests of British subjects resident 
abroad, we wish to offer a few observations on a 
subject so nearly and directly affecting the estima- 
tion we are held in by our neighbours ; to which we 
should surely not be entirely indifferent ! 

As the English are essentially a commercial and 
trading people, it is natural that British subjects 



PRESSURE PUT UPON WEAK STATES. 267 

should be found scattered broadcast over the surface 
of the globe, looking after their interests, and trying 
to open up new channels for a profitable investment 
of their trading capital. 

As long as they are in the old and highly- 
civilized nations of Europe they get on perfectly 
well; and do not, with rare exceptions, give an- 
noyance to their own Government, or that of the 
country in which they have established themselves, 
by getting up claims for grievances, more or less 
founded in fact. When, however, they go to more 
distant or less settled countries, for the sake of 
increasing their profits — for such is really the case 
— then their troubles begin ; and then it is that 
they call for the protection and assistance of Her 
Majesty's Government against that of the country 
in which they are either residing, or have founded 
commercial establishments. 

In many cases their claims are founded in jus- 
tice, but in many more they are brought forward 
with an outward semblance of right, but in reality 
as the safe means of getting repaid tenfold the ori- 
ginal losses they may have to complain of. It is 
principally with the weak and dishonest Govern- 
ments of the New World that the game can be 
played out successfully, as such Governments ge- 
nerally give rise, by their dishonesty, to some sort of 



268 PROTECTION TO SUBJECTS ABROAD. 

grievances; the reparation for which may then be 
safely demanded, when backed by the power of such 
great maritime countries as France and England. 

As an illustration of what we mean, we cannot 
do better than cite a recent instance of such an in- 
terference on the part of a strong Government against 
a weak one in support of a claim such as we have 
described ; and we do so the more readily, as in this 
instance it was " generous and disinterested France " 
which was guilty of an act far more arbitrary than 
any of a similar nature that we have ever been 
accused of. 

Towards the end of the struggle carried on in 
Mexico, some four years ago, between the Church 
party and the Liberals, Miramon, as leader of the 
former, found himself without any funds to carry on 
the war. Not being able to obtain money from any 
other quarter, he applied to Mr. Jecker, a Swiss 
by birth, and established as a banker in the capital 
of the Republic. This individual consented to " ac- 
commodate " the General on the following terms ; 
viz. he furnished him, partly in money and partly in 
depreciated paper, with 700,000 dollars, for which 
Miramon, as the head of the Provisional Govern- 
ment, engaged to repay Jecker the enormous sum of 
14,000,000 dollars ! Shortly after this transaction 
a battle was fought, in which Miramon was defeated, 



THE JECKER BONDS. 269 

and the Liberals then upset the Church party and 
assumed the reins of Government. "No sooner was 
order restored, and Juarez, the chief of the Liberals, 
acknowledged as President of the Republic by all 
the principal European nations, than the Swiss 
banker came forward to claim his fourteen millions ! 
To this demand Juarez naturally enough replied, 
" No, you have played a game and lost your stake, 
and you cannot expect us to give you such great 
profits on money that was lent to our political adver- 
saries to keep us out of power." He did not object* 
to repay the sum actually lent, but refused the four- 
teen millions. Jecker refused this compromise, say- 
ing that he had made a contract with the Govern- 
ment of Mexico, which, whether composed of Liberals 
or Churchmen, was bound to abide by its terms. He 
then claimed the intervention of the French Govern- 
ment, and had himself recognised, subsequent to the 
transaction, as a naturalised French subject ! 

It was this notorious affair that led to the armed 
interference of France, which has brought about the 
partial conquest of the country and the placing of 
an Austrian Archduke, as a sort of French Yiceroy, 
on the throne of Montezuma. 

"Now we contend that such interference as this 
ought not to be used in favour even of any bond 

* After the landing of French forces in Mexico. 



270 PROTECTION TO SUBJECTS ABROAD. 

fide subject of a Government so interfering. The 
matter was one of speculation, and as such should 
have been left to succeed or fail, according to circum- 
stances as they occurred. 

The subject of every powerful nation has an un- 
doubted right to claim the protection of his Govern- 
ment when he is unjustly molested by that of the 
country in which he may happen to be residing, 
but we conceive that he cannot call for such inter- 
ference in order to secure the success of any specu- 
lation in which he may engage with such Govern- 
ment. 

If Englishmen reside abroad as merchants and 
traders, it is because they hope to make better profits 
there than they could do if they remained in their 
own country ; but in voluntarily expatriating them- 
selves for the reason stated, they should be prepared 
to take the good with the evil. 

In most of the minor states of the New World 
large and profitable speculations can, as a general 
rule, be made, by entering into contracts with the 
Government of such states for furnishing arms, am- 
munition, and accoutrements of all sorts, besides va- 
rious other things which are required. If these con- 
tracts were fairly carried out the profits would, in 
most instances, be enormous ; but some hitch is 
nearly sure to occur, and then the aggrieved party 



PROTECTION SHOULD BE LIMITED. 271 

claims the intervention of his Government in his 
favour, usually backed at home by some commercial 
and often political interest following in its wake.* 

We would gladly see the system altered, and the 
rule laid down that henceforward no interference by 
Her Majesty's Government should be used in favour 
of any British subject resident abroad, unless he were 
unjustly molested, either in person or property, ac- 
cording to the laws of the country in which he 
resides. 

* Thus a case is pending in Brazil, a British subject having 
bought for 7000Z. a doubtful claim to an inheritance ; his right to 
it has been denied by three Brazilian courts of law, yet he claims 
an indemnity of 20,000/., and is supported in Parliament by Mr. 
Newdegate. — Editor. 



LONDON: 

Strangeways and Walden, Printers, 
28 Castle St. Leicester Sq. 



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